MARGRETHE II - Artistic family

It is no coincidence, that over and above her duties as a reigning monarch, Queen Margrethe has chosen to engage herself in the arts. The underlying inspiration behind the Queen's choice of artistic expression may well be attributed to her artistic forebears on her mother's side; more specifically, her grandmother, Crown Princess Margareta of Sweden (1882 - 1920), and the Swedish Prince Eugen (1865 - 1947), her grandfather's uncle, who was an important symbolist landscape painter. Both of them have by their example helped to convince the Queen that a life with royal duties is compatible with an active artistic career.

Crown Princess Margareta of Sweden was the daughter of the Duke of Connaught and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, who was reputed to have painted some fine watercolours. In her youth Crown Princess Margareta received tuition in impressionist techniques by the French painter Madeleine Fleury, who was a pupil of the great impressionist painter, Claude Monet.

After her death at the early age of 38, the Crown Princess left behind her a few though endearing impressionistic paintings of the Swedish countryside together with a number of symbolist landscapes in a more minor key, inspired by her older relative Prince Eugen's way of painting.

Queen Margrethe has been well acquainted with her grandmother Crown Princess Margareta's landscapes since childhood. They have hung on the walls in Amalienborg Palace and the Queen has known them well - their moods, picturesque effects and light and shadows - though without their seeming to have had any direct influence on her own art.

For a royal person to exercise artistic discipline is not, and never has been uncomplicated. In Crown Princess Margareta's time and even later it was often regarded as a mere social talent. The paintings themselves, however, bear witness of a sound grasp of the various forms of artistic expression, and the very fact that the Crown Princess had a portable tent specially made to serve as an outdoor studio where she could sit and paint during the winter months suggests that she took her painting seriously.

Prince Eugen had likewise to fight for recognition, and it was despite rather than because of his royal birth that he eventually succeeded. Following studies in Stockholm, in the late 1880s he went to study in Paris under Léon Bonnat, whose studio was frequented by a succession of Scandinavian painters like the Danish Skaw painter, P.S. Krøyer, and Norway's Edvard Munch. He subsequently received tuition from the great French symbolist, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Prince Eugen devoted himself to nature by painting lyrical landscapes, full of atmosphere. These landscapes embody such exuberance and spaciousness that Nordic landscape painting would have been poorer without them.

But it was Queen Margrethe´s grandfather, King Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden, who had a more direct influence on the Queen's artistic interests during her younger years. Over and above his interest in archaeology, later also shared by the Queen, the King was an art connoisseur and collector and, according to the Queen herself, it was he who stimulated and encouraged her creativity.

Finally, another art-interested relative we must not forget to mention Sigvard Bernadotte, Queen Margrethe's uncle, was trained as a silversmith under Georg Jensen in Copenhagen, now regarded as one of the great classical Scandinavian designers.