Frederik Vermehren

Johan Frederik (Frits) Nikolai Vermehren, also known as Frederik Vermehren (12 May 1823 – 10 January 1910), a Danish realistic genre and a portrait painter, was born in Ringsted to glazier, Peter Frederik Nikolai Vermehren and his wife Sofie Amalie. His artistic career took place during the period of Danish art known as the Golden Age of Danish Painting and the Skagen Painters. Vermehren, along with his fellow artists Christen Dalsgaard and Julius Exner, were three big names in the Danish genre of painting as they depicted the ordinary people of the country, especially farmers and other country folks. His idealized depictions helped define and encourage Denmark's national romantic art period. He was a great painter and will be remembered.

At a young age, Frederik worked in his father's workshop and conditions at home were simple. He did not have much opportunity to draw, but he was able to do enough to impress Jørgen Roed, an artist who came from the same area. Frederik finally got the opportunity to begin his artistic training in 1838, when he started drawing classes with landscape painter Johannes Georg Smith Harder (also known as Hans Harder) as a student at Sorø Academy. The young Vermehren made good progress, drawing free hand, making portraits and he wanted to continue developing his art. His father did not want him to seek an art career, however his wife, the poet Bernhard Severin Ingemann, and the director of the Academy, interved and convinced his father to let his son train as an artist.

In 1844 Vermehren went to Copenhagen, where he became a student at the Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) and trained under Jørgen Roed, who also hailed from his hometown of Ringsted. He exhibited his first painting at Charlottenborg in 1847, "En Skomager i sit Køkken" ("A Shoemaker in his Kitchen"). This painting was purchased by Christian VIII and praised by the art critic and national artform advocate Niels Lauritz Høyen. This type of depiction of typical Danish folk played a central part of Vermehren's productions in the next several decades. Vermehren continued to show at Charlottenborg throughout his life with few years as exceptions.

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