Christian Pram-Henningsen

CHRISTIAN PRAM-HENNINGSEN (Denmark, 1846-1892)
"Children playing in the kitchen", 1883.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Period frame.
Measurements: 110 x 88 cm; 143 x 123 cm (frame).

The painting presents an endearing genre scene in which three children, oblivious to any solemnity, turn the kitchen into a place of games and pranks. With a bowl of milk as a pretext and the complicity of a cat waiting patiently, the painter builds a narrative full of humor and tenderness. The composition captures the childlike spontaneity, while the warm light caresses the faces and enhances the liveliness of the gestures, in a perfect balance between naturalistic observation and poetic sensibility.

The interest of this work lies both in its excellent technical workmanship -with a meticulous realism in the representation of materials, lights and textures- and in its ability to transcend the anecdotal and reflect an ideal of universal childhood, in full harmony with the 19th century European bourgeois taste for genre painting.

Pram-Henningsen, trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and later active in Munich, established himself as one of the great representatives of Nordic genre painting. His domestic scenes, recognized for their freshness and quality, are mainly found in museums and private collections in Denmark, Germany and England,