Otto Bacheartist • painterRoskilde (Denemarken) 1839-1927 Kopenhagen

The Danish painter Otto Bache began his studies at the Danish Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen at the age of 10. He would remain associated with this academy for the rest of his life, after his studies also as a teacher and eventually as director. In his early days he painted scenes of daily life in the countryside in the naturalistic style of the academy, with animals taking a prominent place. This changed after 1866 when he received a scholarship for a trip to Paris and Italy. His stay in Paris in particular, where he came into contact with the new trends of modernism, proved to have a great influence on his choice of subject, colour and the rendering of light. Bache was the first to bring this new, French approach to painting to Denmark around 1870. However, unlike his contemporaries, he subsequently returned to the traditional way of painting for the portraits and historical genre pieces that he would increasingly focus on. This work was very popular and sought after in the upper, conservative circles, including the Danish court.