Valdemar Irminger
1850–1938 · Danish painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Valdemar Irminger (Copenhagen, 1850 - 1938) was a Danish painter trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied between 1867 and 1873. His career moved from an early Realist manner towards Romanticism from the 1890s onwards.
He received a scholarship to travel to Italy between 1884 and 1887. In 1888 and 1889 he won the Academy's medal with two paintings connected with the children's hospital at Refsnæs. His brightly coloured open-air scenes from this period, in which children are painted with striking sensitivity, are considered among his finest works. He also worked in portraiture, religious subjects, soldiers and animals.
From 1906 he taught at the Academy's school for women, becoming a professor there from 1908 to 1920. He exhibited regularly at Charlottenborg from 1875 and served on its exhibition and acquisitions committees. In 1889 he was awarded the Eckersberg Medal, and later he received the Order of the Dannebrog (1915) and the Cross of Honour (1925). He is remembered above all for his paintings of children at Refsnæs.
Teachers and pupils
Studied with
- Johan Ludwig Lund 1777–1867