Otto Bache

Otto Bache (1839-1927) was a Danish Realist painter whose work often depicts key episodes of Denmark's history. He trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where he was admitted at the age of eleven after receiving a dispensation, and he studied under Wilhelm Marstrand, among others.

In 1866 he won the academy's travel grant, which took him first to Paris and then to Italy. His time in Paris changed his painting: he gained freedom in handling, richer colour, stronger light and a broader range of subjects. Back in Denmark in 1868, now married, he established himself as a portrait painter, though he also excelled at animal painting, an interest that gradually led him toward genre scenes and history painting.

Among his best-known works are The Conspirators Ride from Finderup After the Murder of Eric Klipping (1882), Danish Soldiers Return to Copenhagen in 1848 and Colonel Müller at Sankelmark Lake, in which a historical event is combined with observation of everyday life and landscape.

Bache also had a prominent institutional career. He became a professor at the academy in 1880 and served as its director in several periods between 1890 and 1906, when Vilhelm Bissen succeeded him. He received Danish honours, including the Order of the Dannebrog. His legacy lies chiefly in how he carried national history painting toward a more open realist language, and in his influence on pupils such as Agnes Lunn and Sigurd Swane. He was the father of the lawyer Niels Haagensen Bache.