Idea Onto Paper
Valdemar Andersen, page in the birthday book for Juliane Andersen, 1924. Privately owned. Photo by Niels C.B. Larsen.
Valdemar Andersen could have relied on the white colour of the paper to serve as snow all around him in those days in 1923 when he was in Nykøbing Mors decorating the towns newly finished courtroom.
Yet it was the texture of the paper that he used for effect. The density of a heavy sky looming over the masses already on the ground.
A tiny figure is bending forward struggling with each step. He is all the tinier from being seen from the elevated ground onto which the new courthouse/police station had been built. In the background the church tower to the right defines the town centre while tall masts demarcate the harbour to the left.
Valdemar Andersen, page in the birthday book for Juliane Andersen, 1924. Privately owned. Photo by Niels C.B. Larsen.
The watercolours were created for a "birthday book" presented to Juliane Andersen the following year sharing his time away from her in Nykøbing Mors.
They were created during his time off from painting inside. As such he was still working, but taking the time to play with whatever caught his eye and transforming the precious moment onto paper. We get as close to his original idea as we possibly can with his added joy of sharing them with his Juliane.
In the watercolour above his eye would have been caught by the movements of the vibrant red against the complementary green behind them. The line of shivering onlookers in black grounds the scene. The colour has been dotted on, making for movement while the dried outer edge of each dot gives it an effect of a contour.
Valdemar Andersen, page in the birthday book for Juliane Andersen, 1924. Privately owned. Photo by Niels C.B. Larsen.
To return to his own scene of his stay, the cemetery has been caught from one of the windows next to the courtroom on the first floor. Some crosses are created from a void against the shrubbery; others are solidly drawn in, creating a dense presence of graves. Elsewhere in Valdemar Andersen's life's work naked branches in winter are always pointing to the sky with the promise of spring, but here they are making reverence, encompassing the garden of the dead.
On next what he was creating inside.
