Painting Technological Progress: P.S. Kroyer's The Industrialists

On the third floor of the Danish Museum of National History hangs the monumental collective portrait The Industrialists (fig. 1). ¹ The work was commissioned in 1903 by Gustav Adolph Hagemann, director of the Polyteknisk Læreanstalt (Denmark’s technical university) and an influential Danish businessman and engineer. The artist is Peder Severin Krøyer, the most well known—and certainly the most expensive—Danish painter of the 1880s and the 1890s. ²

Figure 1.

The Industrialists (1903–4). Painted by P. S. Krøyer. Commissioned by G. A. Hagemann (1843–1916). Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 116 by 147 centimeters. (Courtesy of the Danish Museum of National History, Frederiksborg Castle, Hillerød.

The Industrialists is set in the Østerbro electric power station in Copenhagen, late on an early spring afternoon. Fifty-three gentlemen have just arrived to take part in a special guided tour of the new power station. They gather in the machine hall, which is dominated by three large steam engines that drive the generators hidden behind the guests in the right half of the picture. The room appears alive with activity. Saluting, discussing, gesticulating, the industrialists are clustered in apparently casual groups—which are, of course, anything but. The oldest and most distinguished men are carefully arranged in the foreground; the younger and less important men stand behind them. Hagemann himself stands atop the steam engine in the foreground; small in stature and wearing no hat, he occupies a modest position second from the left. No one could possibly accuse him of stealing the scene from his prominent guests. On the other hand, nobody would find it difficult to believe that he is the main actor among the fifty-three models. Hagemann looks like the captain on a bridge, surrounded by his officers.

When inviting Krøyer to paint The Industrialists, Hagemann wanted to hail progress, particularly the advancements made possible by modern technology and its pioneers. Most people would probably agree that Krøyer has managed to convey the power and prestige of the group, giving them the self-confident air of men at the center of a new and dynamic enterprise. In short, the painter has succeeded in creating a monumental painting, one that radiates fascination with technology and an optimistic view of the future. How did he achieve this?

First, Krøyer depicted the relationship between people and machines as one of perfect harmony. The towering, black steam engines, sensuous symbols of the forces of nature, are not demons threatening to take power from humans. On the contrary, the industrialists are the masters, the machines merely obedient slaves. The industrialists are relaxed; surrounding and standing atop the machines, the men dominate them completely.

Second, Krøyer used light in a new, refined manner. The room and the men in it are illuminated by an intense electric light—an easily understood symbol of the abstract scientific and technical knowledge that unites the modern industrialists. Radiating from arc lamps in the ceiling and countless electric lightbulbs generously scattered all over the room, light is reflected in the large windows at one end of the room. The light is everywhere; even in the remote corners of the room, every shadow has been driven away. Outside, night slowly falls over the city. It is “the blue hour,” a time of day that Krøyer loved. But inside the new temple of electricity the modern industrialists have dispelled the darkness. They have created a comfortable world of glass, steel, electricity, and artificial lighting. Although it is an artificial world, it is not a frightening one. For the moment, this world is reserved for the privileged few. Soon, however, it will be available to everyone.

It is tempting to compare The Industrialists with another famous group portrait: Men of Progress (1863), by the American painter Christian Schussele. ³ Painted during the Civil War, that picture caught the imagination of thousands of Americans; in the decades that followed, reproductions of it hung on the walls of many homes. As its title...