Description
Butterfly Grand
A 1918, Soren Jensen model D butterfly grand piano with a polished, maple case. The gilt music desk is in an openwork, scrolling design featuring flowers, shells amd swags. Piano sits on three square, tapered legs with bronze female nude, caryatids adorning the top. The traditionally shaped, piano lyre features a gilted, carved band of foliage and berries. The pedals are in a spiral design with studded embellishment. Carved, gilt, openwork panels featuring shells, foliage and scrolls adorn the high piano cheeks.
Hand-Painted
Cabinet features hand-painted ovals by Danish artist Gudmund Hentze. In the first, a fair haired maiden, vested in blue with a golden belt holds a dagger aloft. In the second, a man flees a crowd of gnomes with a barrow filled with gold, urged on by a seated woman. In the third, a nurse snoozes in a chair next to a cot as a baby is stolen. In the fourth, beneath the boughs of a tree, a seated maiden offers a scarlet clad man a golden cup. In the fifth, the scarlet clad man flees at night with a golden cup across a river as nymphs grab his limbs to slow him down.
Gudmund Hentze
Gudmund Hentze, June 1 1875 – May 6 1948, was a Danish symbolist and national romantic painter, graphic designer, designer, and illustrator. In 1893-1894 he was part of the movement around the journal Taarnet, which advocated symbolism in art, primarily literature led by the author Johannes Jorgensen. Hentze illustrated many books, including J.P. Jacobsen's novel Fru Marie Grubbe and fairy tales by Hans.C. Andersen. His illustration resembled that of his colleague Lorenz Frolichs, but where he was inspired by German and French artists, Hentze was primarily stylistically inspired by the English prerafaelites and Aubrey Beardsley. His artworks often depict ideal naked female figures in a historical or mythological landscape.
Soren Jensen
Soren Jensen 16.07.1865 - 1.2.1939. Manufactured pianos in Copenhagen between 1893 – 1918. He co-founded the Danish Piano Manufacturers Association in 1895, and later became its chairman from 1903 to 1911. In 1893 he established himself as a piano manufacturer. The 5600m2 building in northern Copenhagen was built in 1905/06 to open his piano factory. From modest beginnings, employing only two men in the workshop, he built the company up to be one of the largest in Scandinavia. He participated eagerly in the exhibitions and his instruments won recognition from authorities such as J.P.E. Hartmann, August Winding and Gottfred Matthison-Hansen. He built a variety of pianos aimed at various price ranges. He constructed the very popular 'Daniaflygel', Dania grand piano, and an upright described as the 'National Piano', intended as a cheap alternative to German imports. He used artists and architects such as N.V. Dorph, Gudmund Hentze and Valdemar Andersen to decorate the instruments. He advocated decorative paintings reminiscent of those found on early harpsichords and clavichords and loved gilded decoration. He found ordinary grand pianos too furniture-like and wanted a free hand to shape and embellish an instrument. The results were certainly different from those of his peers.
