St. Croix Artistically Rediscovered One Hundred Years Ago
By Nina York
At the beginning of the 20th century, today's U.S.Virgin Islands were known as the Danish West Indies until the 1917 sale and transfer to the U.S. At that time, this was a quiet backwater, with its population primarily descendants of the enslaved people brought here from Africa generations before. This colony, once prosperous for the Danish government and sugar cane plantation owners, had lost much of its importance, and a debate raged in Denmark about selling the islands. Some opposed to the sale facilitated the visit by a young Danish artist to come here and portray the beauty of this place and the people living here.
Hugo Larsen, a 29-year old graduate of the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen, arrived here in 1904 and was dazzled by the light and spirit of the tropics. He felt at ease with the local population and set about portraying them and the tropical environment in oil paintings and drawings in a sympathetic and intimate manner. His previous realistic style now often took on an impressionistic flavor. We know little of his daily life here as he wrote no diary, but he produced about fifty paintings of the St. Thomas and St. Croix scene before heading back to Denmark with his works three years later. The exhibition of his works there proved a big disappointment. No longer were people interested in the islands, and they saw Larsen's style as outmoded.
While the artist continued painting in Denmark and eventually sold most of his works from the islands to Danish clients, Larsen would have been forgotten if it has not been for his great-nephew Jan Tuxen, who felt that his relative, who died in 1950, should be recognized, particularly for his art from the islands. After tracking down about 40 of Hugo Larsen's works in private collections, Tuxen arranged an exhibit at Oregaard Museum near Copenhagen. He also produced a website www.hugolarsen.dk documenting Hugo Larsen's career.
I was somewhat familiar with and enthusiastic about Larsen's works but realized bringing the paintings to the Virgin Islands, where they were virtually unknown, would prove too costly. I decided on an alternative, namely to produce a documentary video about Hugo Larsen and showing what he portrayed from here.
Discussions by various presenters about the artist and his time are part of the video now on DVD. It was funded by a grant from the Virgin Islands Humanities Council and the Virgin Islands Department of Education. To learn more about the video, stop by the Scale House bookstore in Christiansted, which also handles the English version of the exhibit catalog.
