Hvad er der pa faerde (What is going on in Copenhagen?)

Although a pupil of the Copenhagen Academy of Fine Arts, Paul Fischer largely rejected the traditional teaching of the national Romantic school and followed the lessons of a group of younger artists such as Krøyer, Locher and Tuxen, whose stylistic tendencies and subject matter were heavily influenced by their travels and studies in Paris in the late 1870s and 1880s and who subsequently heralded a new era in Danish art. Despite the immense influence that Parisian artistic trends had in the 1880s and 1890s on the development of Danish art, Fischer remains one of the most quintessentially Danish artists of his time. Inspired largely by scenes of daily life in Copenhagen, his street scenes display the vitality and a sense of immediacy in their subject matter and execution that many of his contemporaries were seeking abroad. In its depiction of contemporary society and of the atmosphere of a large architecturally designed space within a major European city, Hvad er der pa færde can be compared with Albert Edelfelt's seminal work from 1887, The Luxembourg Gardens (Ateneum, Helsinki). Fischer employs similarly complex rhythms that create a sense of movement around the composition and give the whole a sense of depth and space. While Edelfelt imbues his scene with a sense of warmth through the contrast between light and shade however, Fischer gives much compositional weight to the sky, whose scudding clouds lend a dramatic light and atmosphere to the scene.

Hvad er der pa færde depicts the Radhuspladsen (the Town Hall Square) by Vesterbro's Passage, the latter being the title of the work when it was exhibited at Charlottenborg in 1900. Fischer often used his family and friends as models and in the present work the artist's wife and his son Sigurd are recognizable in the foreground as well as the family's washing lady Mrs Røj, their grocer Johs. Karén, Mrs Olga Stender and Miss Emilie Rasmussen. In the background is the Frihedsstøtten, the obelisk-shaped monument built in 1792-97 after designs by Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard and decorated with friezes and designs by Johannes Wiedewelt and Nicolai Dajon.