After the Tempest
- Artist: Jens Ferdinand Willumsen
- Creation date: 1905
About
A young woman comes running on a deserted beach with a small boy hot on her heels. Trying to reach her, the boy stretches his right arm toward her, but in vain – the woman’s body language clearly indicates that she has enough with herself and her own anguish. We see the reason behind her: a capsized boat that was swept up in a storm. Perhaps it is one of her loved ones who has drowned in the tempest that now has passed? She and the boy are left to fend for themselves amidst the desolate, inhospitable nature. Even the intense rays of the sun, the jagged bluffs, and the empty beach are sensed as threatening and corrosive. Jens Ferdinand Willumsen has emphasized all these elements through his sharp delineation and a discordant colour scheme that highlights bright violets, grimy oranges, poisonous greens, and acidic yellows.
At the time Willumsen was interested in the dynamic relationship between the creative and destructive forces of nature, often in connection with mountain and maritime landscapes. In his painting Sun and Youth, the running and bathing children represent the vigorous joy of life, while the overriding emotions in After the Tempest are despair and isolation. Willumsen’s inspiration for the running woman was the plaster casts of the victims who fled from the volcanic outbreak in Pompeii (AD 79). During the excavations at Pompeii, the excavators discovered that plaster could be poured into the cavities that people, animals, and objects had left behind in the layers of ash, so that castings could thus be made of them. Willumsen was familiar with these castings.
As a painter, potter, sculptor, and architect, Jens Ferdinand Willumsen was Denmark’s most international and versatile artist around the year 1900. He made the intricately designed frame with its bronze ornamentation himself.
- Creation date:
- 1905
- Other titles:
- Etter stormen (NOR)
- Object type:
- Painting
- Materials and techniques:
- Tempera på lerret
- Material:
- Canvas
- Dimensions:
- Width: 150.5 cm
- Depth: 2.4 cm
- Height: 156 cm
- Keywords:
- Visual art
- Classification:
- 532 - Bildende kunst
- Motif:
- Coastal landscape
- Motif - type:
- Landscape
- Inventory no.:
- NG.M.01008
- Cataloguing level:
- Single object
- Acquisition:
- Acquired 1913
- Owner and collection:
- Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design, The Fine Art Collections
- Photo:
- Larsen, Frode
- Copyright:
- © Willumsen, Jens Ferdinand/BONO
- Landschaft als Kosmos der Seele. Malerei des nordischen Symbolismus bis Munch 1880–1910Köln, Tyskland(1998)Dreams of a summer night. Scandinavian painting at the turn of the centuryLondon, Storbritannia(1986)
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Preparatory work to same object
- Female NudeJens Ferdinand Willumsen30. september 1904
- Female NudeJens Ferdinand Willumsen30. september 1904
- Female NudeJens Ferdinand Willumsen10. januar 1905
- Figure StudiesJens Ferdinand Willumsen1904 eller 1905
- Female FaceJens Ferdinand Willumsen1904 eller 1905
- Figure StudyJens Ferdinand Willumsen15. juni 1905
- Figure StudyJens Ferdinand Willumsen1904 eller 1905
- Figure StudyJens Ferdinand Willumsen9. juni 1905
- Drapert figurJens Ferdinand Willumsen6. september 1904
- Figure StudyJens Ferdinand Willumsen1904 eller 1905
Other works by Jens Ferdinand Willumsen
- Female FaceJens Ferdinand Willumsen1904 eller 1905
- Figure StudiesJens Ferdinand Willumsen1904 eller 1905
The Painter Ludvig RavensbergJens Ferdinand Willumsen(1914)
Sleeping Man and CatJens Ferdinand Willumsen1916 (trykk)
Mayor MarstrandJens Ferdinand Willumsen1919- Ediths hode fra sidenJens Ferdinand Willumsen22. januar 1910
- Miss Edith Carvell's MartyrdomJens Ferdinand Willumsen(1916)
- Figure StudyJens Ferdinand Willumsen1904 eller 1905
- Sandy BeachJens Ferdinand Willumsen24. august 1904
Playing CupidsJens Ferdinand Willumsen1912
City Manager PhilipsenJens Ferdinand Willumsen1919- Mother and ChildJens Ferdinand Willumsen24. februar 1910

















































