Vilhelm Kyhn

Vilhelm Kyhn
Vilhelm Kyhn portrayed by his pupil Anna Ancher shortly before his death in 1903
Born	(1819-03-30)30 March 1819 Copenhagen
Died	11 May 1903(1903-05-11) (aged 84) Frederiksberg
Nationality	Danish
Education	Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
Known for	Painting
Movement	Danish Golden Age

Peter Vilhelm Carl Kyhn, (30 March 1819 – 11 May 1903) was a Danish landscape painter who belonged to the generation of national romantic painters immediately after the Danish Golden Age and before the Modern Breakthrough. Even though he outlived many of his artistic peers by several decades, he remained a traditionalist and expressed strong criticism of many of the new trends in the painting of his day.

Kyhn also played a role as an educator, establishing several alternative art schools, including a painting school for women which was attended by Anna Ancher among others.

Kyhn was born in Copenhagen to Carl Gottlieb Kyhn and his wife Sara Marie. His father was against his becoming an artist, and he was first put to train in a business office; then as a compromise he was allowed to train with copperplate engraver, Georg Hoffmann. Here he learned to make vignettes, a skill which became useful to him later when he learned to make etchings.

He also got the opportunity to begin his training at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1836. He entered the School of Plaster Model Painting in 1840, and into the School of Model Painting in 1841, where he was influenced by the classicism of teacher Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, father of the Golden Age of Danish Painting, and J. L. Lund. He was also influenced by Niels Lauritz Høyen, another teacher at the Academy as well as an important art critic and art historian, who encouraged a unique Danish school of art. N. F. S. Grundtvig was also a source of inspiration in his turn towards national romanticism.