Jorgen (Jørgen) Valentin Sonne (1801-1890) was a Danish painter known for painting battle scenes. He was a genre painter, which meant a pictorial representation of scenes or events from everyday life. Jorgan Sonne was born at Birkerod. His father was a copperplate engraver for the royal mint and his brother, a printmaker.

Fascination for painting

Jørgen Sonne first came to the Land Cadet Academy to become an officer, presumably under the impression of all the warlike events that must have filled his mind in his childhood. Soon after that, Sonne exchanged the cadet academy with the art academy, which he began to visit in 1815. Sonne also became a private student of the animal and percussionist CD Gebauer. This student relationship with Gebauer became more important to him than the student relationship with J L Lundat at the model school from 1819.

War Painting Specialist

Jørgen Sonne, over time, developed a way of painting in which the intertwining of the figures and an evocative light treatment became his characteristics and strength. At the age of seventeen, Jørgen Sonne began exhibiting, copies of older Dutchmen. WarThe war scenes with motifs interspersed with Danish and French history or the Greco-Turkish war also figured in his exhibiting efforts. At that period of time, he was the only one who practised this subject. Hence, he received the academy’s recommendation and support for further his study of art. With this help from the Academy in the form of a small stipend, he went to Munich in 1828.

Munich Sojourn

He became an apprenticeship under a history painter where he stayed for three years. However, he did not make much progress as a painter during his stay in Munich. Here he became a pupil of the famous P. v. Cornelius. In particular, he must have attached himself to the ten-year-old Peter v. Hess, who had already won a name by battle paintings and folk-life pictures. His small production during this period can probably find its explanation in the lively artist and student life lived in Munich. However, the summer trips in the mountains must have opened his eyes as later life in the Campaign and the mountains around Rome did.

Influence of Rome

In 1831, Jørgen Sonne continued his journey to Italy, which became his home for ten years. The artist circles he met in Rome were closely related to those he had left in Munich. The picture he painted in the first years was of A Valplads the morning after a battle. In Rome, Jørgen Sonne made trips to villages to observe the life and daily habits of rural folk. What matured him, first and foremost, was his intimate coexistence with Italian nature and people. He painted the beautiful landscape studies from the mountains. Maturation took place as several of the Italian folk life pictures show it, eg the very beautiful ‘Roman Peasants’, especially in the composition, who go to the Market.

Paint Danish Folk Life as a Dane

Sonne also made several sketches during this period. After returning to Denmark in 1841, Sonne made ample use of his study of Italian and Danish peasants and their village life for his works. With the growing national feeling, it was highlighted as a natural task for Danish painters to depict Danish folklife. So, Jørgen Sonne was happy to turn to this new subject of painting. Jørgen Sonne got the first set task from the academy, painting a hunting scene.

His Masterpieces

In 1846, Jørgen Sonne painted a picture of ‘peasants on their way to church‘. The following year he exhibited one of his fine masterpieces, The Sick’. In his remarks about the exhibition, NL Høyen has rightly highlighted this work as one of the strangest in Danish painting history. Sonne makes the juxtaposition of the elements of the composition with rare finesse. The picture has a style that is the artist’s own and is also found in his other masterpieces. Among the best are also the art museum’s two unfinished works, ‘Farmers who have lit a bonfire on a huge St. Hansaften and Julemorgen‘. A painting that shows his art’s union of monumentality and penetrating atmosphere is the Aarhus Museum’s ‘A Funeral‘ which was exhibited in 1859.

War Front Sketching

With the start of the First Schleswig War, Jorgan Sonne received permission to accompany the army. The soldiers at the front line were hugely impressed by the way he, aged 63 years, was sketching. Sonne was oblivious of the bullets flying around him on the battlefield while he was at his job. When Jørgen Sonne is at his best, his art has an intense atmosphere that is quite unusual in Danish art; even in lively folklife scenes, a basic tone of seriousness and respect for the subject is felt. This attitude towards his fellow human beings also permeates the beautiful portrait he gives of the workers. Jørgen Sonne had no successors to his distinctive Nordic romance.

Awards and accolades

Sonne received the ‘Ankerske’ award, an award given to writers and painters. Besides canvasses, he was also designing large murals. One such mural designed by him for the walls of Thorvaldson Museum is famous. Sonne also made illustrations for the Danish version of the Hindu play ‘Shakuntala’. In 1852, Sonne was appointed a ‘Knight of the Order of Dannebrog. In the later stage of his life, Sonne developed an eye problem and became too weak to paint. He never married in his life.

Greatest pieces of Sonne’s works

Some of the extraordinary pieces of Sonne’s paintings are, 1) Summer Evening by the Sound, 2) The Garden at Falkensteen Manor with a view to Sludstrup Church, 3) In a city in the Roman, 4) Evening in Rome, 5) Young Lady Watching the summer night from an open patio door, 6) A funeral. Motif from Northern Nealand, 7) Rural Scene, 8)Scene of the wine harvest at Naples, 9) Shepherds in the Roman Campagna, 10) A Horse in the stable, 11) Summer Landscape With a Girl Herding Geese 12) Morning at the Stable door, 13) The Church Path in the Forest, 14) A flock of Hinds in The Forest, 15) Pasture with Cows backyard 16) Children by a creek, 17) Nuns walking in a cloister garden in Rome.

Shepherds in the Roman Campagna (1835)

Having received a stipend of 500 rixdollars, Sonne travelled to Italy where he lived, in Campagna, for 10 years from 1831-40. Campagna was an inexhaustible source of aesthetic pleasure for poets and artists. It was also a source of subjects for artists for painting picturesque landscapes as portrayed in genre art. But the life of shepherds was difficult, toilsome, and unromantic. In this painting, Sonne depicted three shepherds with their dogs and flock of sheep while the setting sun casts a warm and golden light across the landscape.