Storm P. and the women

STORM P. og kvinderne

introduction

Storm P. – the art form Robert Storm Petersen (1882-1949) was extremely prolific. He was an illustrator, an author, an actor, a cartoonist and a film director. He produced more than 60,000 drawings and an ocean of books, cartoons and revues. His friend Ebbe Rode very indicatively spoke of him as ‘Storm P. – the art form’.

Storm drew numerous cartoons; the best known of these are Peter Vimmelskaft’s Experiences (Peter & Ping), The 3 little Men and the Number Man, The Daily Fly and A strange Man. Over the decades they have become part of the Danish identity, and his wordplays as well as the many pearls of wisdom from the ‘Flies’ have entered the Danish language.

Typically for the period is that the main characters in the cartoons are male – the portly Peter Vimmelskaft reminiscent of the older Storm P. himself; the vagabonds with the philosophers’ names and the little clerks and venerable professor types who people the ‘flies’.

Storm P. 1916

STORM P. og kvinderne

introduction

STORM AND THE WOMEN In an interview for the magazine ‘Women of Today’ in 1937, Storm P. was asked whether he ‘liked drawing women?’ His answer was: ‘I don’t think so – at least it doesn’t seem that way when you look at the drawings!’

And if you look, there aren’t as many women as men and it appears that it was not easy for Storm to draw them. However, Storm solves this problem with his typical pragmatism by copying or by making collages. Men in all shapes and sizes – from the vagabond and the pimp to the clerk and the jolly bon viveur flourish in numerous drawings and have been drawn with a steady hand.

There are not as many women and those that are there are not particularly beautiful or in line with the ideals of the time, to put it mildly. In the early drawings they have clearly been copied from other artists’ originals. In the later drawings they have become stylized, sometimes with almost ornamented shapes – or they have simply been cut out from other magazines and glued in like a sort of collage.

STORM P. og kvinderne

introduction

At the same time, the women have – in tune with the figure gallery of the contemporary satire – acquired the character of types: The matronly housewife, the circus princess or the modern lady with fur and intricate hat.

The exhibition shows a motley collection of these drawings; humorous as well as tragicomic; touching pictures as well as rough ones about the relations between the sexes. Because Storm P.’s pictures of women are special.

Common to the works showing man versus woman is that they rarely show an equal relationship. Most often the power balance is off and in most cases to the woman’s advantage. The dominant woman and the small man appear most regularly in the drawings.

The starting point is the magazine drawings, paintings and watercolours that bring the gender roles to a head. Works where the satire reflects contemporary tendencies as a comment on social conditions, but also works that show clear inspiration – both in form and content – from the artistic trends of the period.

STORM P. og kvinderne

introduction

The main part of the drawings is from the period 19001920 and some are from the 1930es and 1940es.

Particularly the 1910s and 1920es are periods where Storm is broadly inspired and tests out a variety of styles in both painting and magazine and caricature drawings. This is also the time, when he – directly contrary to the norm of the times and against his parents’ wish – falls madly in love with a 23 year older married woman, Lydia, who becomes his wife and muse.

But it is also a time when the world is changing in many ways. Europe is at war, new artistic isms are flowering and significant changes are happening in the areas of gender equality and women’s rights. All of this is reflected in the works of the exhibition.

The exhibition is divided into three main themes: Caricature and satire Art and inspiration Storm, Mads and Ellen

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

FROM BUTCHER’S APPRENTICE TO ILLUSTRATOR Storm comes from a family of butchers and the idea is for him to follow their path and take over his father’s business. But the animal-loving and sensitive young Robert does not care much for the bloody business.

He would rather draw and act in plays.

So it makes him very happy when he is allowed to quit his apprenticeship. In his diary he writes this little verse: The hand is white which once was red The hand brings life that once brought death However, the time in the butcher’s shop does bring something good about. It is the reason for his debut as an illustrator in Danish Butchers’ News in 1902 with a satirical drawing of a Copenhagen politician Gustav Philipsen.

It is also in the butchers’ environment he meets his future wife and muse, Lydia Clementine Angelica Sørensen – better known as “Mads”.

Storm as a butcher’s apprentice with his uncle Frederik and his younger brother Karl. App. 1897.

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

She is older than the only 19 year old Robert; she is married and the mother of two children. This does not sit well with Storm’s parents.

The relationship is kept secret for the first years and they only get married after the death of Storm’s father in 1913. The inspiration of Mads’ straightforward nature, her southern looks and plump body can be seen clearly in several of Storm’s drawings.

In his twenties, Storm is very productive. He studies to become an actor at the Casino theatre; he draws, paints and writes like crazy for the contemporary joke magazines and he starts the “Uncle Sam Club”. The name comes for his enthusiasm about America. His drawing style and satire really take shape in the club’s small home-made booklets printed in his father’s basement.

Storm has more and more drawings and series printed in the many contemporary magazines and satirical periodicals. He also produces his very own weekly magazine STORM, published for two years in 1915 and

1916. The baroque humour, the varied sources of inspiration and his remarkable productivity gets his drawings into newspapers and magazines everywhere. In 1922, he becomes the first illustrator in Denmark to be on the permanent staff of a newspaper. From 1922 his cartoons and series are daily features in the newspaper B.T. When as a young actor…I one day heard a well-known politician…with clenched fists establish that we were eating the dry bread while the rich people ate roast duck – and then after the show sat down with him at a table with roast duck and all the trimmings – then I realized that I did not want to be a profound painter when life was so full of misunderstandings – and then I started drawing caricatures, writing small stories, acting in comedies and all that – I had found my field.

Interview in Berlingske evening paper 1934

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

WOMEN’S IMAGES Relations between men and women are a recurring theme both in Storm’s magazine and caricature drawings and in his other pictorial art and paintings from the years 1900-1920.

The relation between the sexes is marked by tensions; from the painful and horrible through the romantic and erotic to the humorously caricatured. Most often the relations are conditioned by an under-lying humorous relation, even in the more caustic and cruel drawings.

The variations are plentiful: Husband and wife; prostitute and client; artist and model or as in “The Tailor in Paradise” – Adam and Eve. Storm is a master at drawings contrasts and the satirical trick of setting up opposites is particularly seen in the drawings that place the sexes opposite each other.

Moral confronted with the Fall; marriage with adultery; sexuality and prostitution with bourgeoisie nar-

row-mindedness. As for types, the small manikin is seen with the either physically superior or dominant woman.

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

In many of Storm’s drawings it appears as if both sexes are subject to some machinery – whether this may be sexual urges or financial self-maintenance – that makes an equal and loving meeting problematic.

In spite of the poor odds, the women still – in Storm’s perspective – become superior to the men, almost dangerously so. They are indomitable and the man becomes the small and ridiculed one in the meeting with the women who with their voluminosity, sensual charm or unobtainability floor the men.

The women are rarely beautiful in the normal sense of the word but they are often mysterious and – to a present-day onlooker – remarkably bulky. They may be both elevated, matronly Madonnas in buttoned-up dresses and prostitutes in alluring outfit juggling with the dazzled men.

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

MARRIAGE

She: You cannot complain. You received a nice dowry with me.

He: Yes, but now you’re all that’s left.!

Jakel 21. apr. 1904

Marriage is a huge subject for satirical treatment in the many magazines. Particularly the “piquancy” of society life – staged as conversations between couples – can also be found in Storm’s works in many variations in the early cartoons from 1902 onwards. Barons, counts and society ladies are often the protagonists.

The drawings are inspired by the contemporary Art Nouveau style and Storm has undoubtedly seen similar drawings in both Danish and foreign magazines.

He has very much had one eye on different sources of inspiration when it comes to the overly-decorated hat-wearing ladies who are not drawn with as sure a hand as the men are.

The play between husband and mistress, wife and suitors as well as the themes of infidelity and the bothers of marriage are converted into semi-sleazy drawn jokes.

- Sometimes, when I see you, I’m so happy, Amanda.

- You can have that happiness for life, Karl.

- Excuse me, I did say ‘sometimes’!!

Hold mig i Haanden 29. sept. 1908

In this diversity of magazine drawings of varying content and quality it is important to keep in mind that these are not necessarily the ideas of the cartoonist.

They had many pages to fill up with jokes that could provide a quick laugh and then be forgotten immediately.

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

IN THE ATTIC In the Attic, A distant Relation, Artist and Model in the Studio and Undressed Woman and Flute-playing Man as well as Interview all share similar motives: A naked or half-naked woman and a man in a room or an attic.

The relations are not quite clear-cut. Are we seeing an artist and his model? A prostitute with her client or her pimp? Or are they lovers? A fundamental humorous and crooked relation exists between the persons – as if the situation is not equal. The woman’s nudity is a little piquant as in the drawing Interview and not just humorous.

Art history gives numerous examples of nudity that is neither offensive nor erotic as the motive is historical or mythological.

It is as if Storm’s satirical depictions bring up the discrepancy between art’s (and the artist’s) view of the woman as a model and “reality’s” (the pimp’s) view of the woman as something carnal and turns the discrepancy into a humorous or social point. Storm’s satirical

depictions often play on this relationship between art and reality.

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

GOULASH During World War I, circumstances in neutral Denmark are marked by a financial boom where agriculture and industry make good money on the war.

Apart from the drawings capturing the horrors of war, Storm has also produced several satirical drawings during this period skewering people who make money on the war; the nouveau riche like the “goulash barons” who make money on selling canned meat to the contending forces.

This new class of upstarts splashing money about symbolized by the cigar-smoking, jewel-encrusted bon vivant becomes a recurring satirical archetype and almost a symbol of the deep abyss between rich and poor. In the work “Goulash”, however, you seen the “villain” reduced and ridiculed as a small powerless manikin sitting on the oversized woman – who is the biggest peddler?

As long as I have anything to sell, I’m not letting go of this one! Cover for the magazine “Storm” 1915. ”

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

THE AGE AND WOMEN’S CIRCUMSTANCES During Storm’s lifetime gender equality and women’s rights undergo several distinctive changes. Changes that can be directly reflected in the themes of the magazine illustrations.

In 1915 women get the right to vote in parliamentary elections and in 1921 the statute law relating to employment that gave employers the right to keep their servants under slave-like conditions was abolished. These changes are in part caused by the women starting to organize. Among others the writer Thit Jensen made a huge effort for women’s right to “voluntary motherhood” through contraception and sex instruction. In 1923, she founds the society Voluntary Motherhood.

Prostitution as a theme is strongly represented in both art and satire around the year 1900. The widespread prostitution in Denmark is a hot topic, but sexuality is not talked about. This causes a lot of unfactual assumptions to flourish; venereal diseases are a poi-

son emanating from women; proletarian women have other needs than bourgeois women and women who display sexual behaviour are mentally disturbed. It is however, generally accepted that bourgeois men but sex before marriage.

According to the law of 1874, prostitutes must enter their names in a public register and have regular health checks to keep the spread of venereal diseases under control. The law is abolished in 1906 and public prostitution is totally banned. However, sex for sale is still in demand and women’s opportunities of properly paid work are so poor that prostitution continues beneath the surface. This causes a deterioration of the prostitutes’ conditions as they are now getting their customers via a pimp whereas before they had a madam to take care of conditions.

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

SOCIAL SATIRE The Denmark in which Storm grows up is very different from Denmark today. It is a class society with large and visible differences between rich and poor. Just around the year 1900 there are several events that become the subject of the illustrators’ sharp pens. In 1904, Minister for Justice P.A. Alberti brings back flogging, giving the police the right to practice violence through corporal punishment. It is also Alberti who abolishes legalized prostitution in 1906.

Storm’s social-critical satire springs from a heartfelt commitment to the weakest in society; an attitude that remains fundamental to his view on life and to his art.

In spite of the relative affluence in Denmark around the year 1900, social distress and its consequences such as sickness and alcoholism are very visible.

Friday Night 1908

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

This also makes it a frequent topic in the magazines and newspapers that Storm draws for. It is a wide spectrum from indignant social satire to comedy with the inhabitants from the bottom of society in the main roles.

Putting up opposites to bring about the shocking and tragicomic points is one of caricatures main features.

The big, fat rich man opposite the poor beggar. The massive police officer opposite the wasted homeless.

The message comes across in no uncertain terms.

Storm’s sharpest social satire is particularly expressed in the magazines “Gnisten (the Spark)”, “Ekstrabladet”, “Ravnen (the Raven)”, “Fyrtøjet (the Tinderbox)” and” Exlex” in the years 1907-1920. Here he works with notable editors such as Frejlif Olsen from “Ekstrabladet” and Ragnvald Blix from the Scandinavian magazine “Exlex”.

Klatsch 1909

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

The drunken Man At the start of the century, entertainment is linked to the many theatres, music halls and pavilions with cabaret girls where the underpaid dancing and singing girls made a little on the side by prostituting themselves. Many of these places also serve liquor and around the year 1900 there were as many public houses in central Copenhagen as there is today while the number of inhabitants was only half of today’s. Add to this, that aquavit – also called the poor man’s comfort – is incredibly cheap. This makes “the drunken man” a character often seen in the streets and in Storm’s works the red-nosed drunkard is a recurring male type.

He is either seen as the ragged drunken vagabond (not to be confused with the jolly and pleasant types from Storm’s later drawings) or as the husband who is drinking up his pay in a public house.

The wife is drawn as a poor victim of society but also as the one who tries to keep the home together and collects the drunken husband at the public house with the starving children in her arms.

Drunk – I’m not bloody drunk! I’m just tired and could drink a lot more – if only I wasn’t so damn tired!

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

The Morbid Drowned, hanged, skeletons, chopped-off limbs and foetuses in alcohol appear often in Storm’s earlier drawings. For example he finds inspiration for a grotesque series of “modern surgery” (in the satirical magazine Klods Hans) from the French satirical artist Abel Faivre. Faivre drew for the magazine “L’Assiette au Beurre” and Storm may well have purchased a copy of the magazine on his Paris trip in 1906. The morbid fascinates Storm and he does not conserve the effects.

In the darkest social-satirical drawings, suicide is seen as the last miserable consequence but also as the only way out of the misery. Suicide is not a heroic martyr’s death or the result of unrequited love as is most often seen in art history. It is a consequence of society’s point blank refusal of the poor, sick and lost person. Often the bereaved wife or husband gets the final word with a witty comment pulling the subject so far into absurdity that it becomes a baroque and morbid joke.

Is he dead? I don’t know – he won’t say anything

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

DIARY SHEETS From 1917 to 1949, “Storm Petersen’s Diary Sheets” is published as a daily column in the newspaper B.T. The drawings are accompanied by explaining texts and are often connected to larger or smaller current events. This makes them excellent as absurd and humorous sources of Denmark’s history.

These ten are from the time during and after the Occupation and thus later than the other drawings in the exhibition. They show the characteristic manner of the older Storm P. – and the subtle humour that is most often connected with his magazine drawings.

The years during World War II are a period where Storm as all other artists is subject to strict limitations on his comments. So the circumstances of the war such as the lack of commodities become the source for the humorous points.

The housewife’s trouble of stretching the coupons or

of finding fanciful replacements for the unobtainable foodstuffs becomes a particular genre in the Diary Sheets.

The drawings show a – for these years – recurring si tuation i.e. the shopping situation. Man and wife at the butcher’s, grocer’s or baker’s. The housewife is managing the shopping roughly with a small manikin at her arm.

All the Diary Sheets are drawn in the same format and the same style – a slightly flat perspective, imaginative shadings and a tendency to turn the women into shapes and patterns.

STORM P. og kvinderne

CARICATURE AND SATIRE

MAGAZINES AND PERIODICALS On the walls and in the display cases you will find examples of the many publications that both inspired Storm and helped shape his style. You will also find examples of some of the different publications that he provides drawings for. So these are NOT all Storm P.’s drawings on display but a selection from Storm’s own collection of publications that contains several thousands of albums, periodicals and magazines, both Danish and foreign.

Early in the 20th century the periodicals play a very important role. They reproduce images in an amazing quality and they are the medium for communicating contemporary art, science etc. all over the world. Periodicals with art, satire and humour are among the most popular both in Denmark and abroad. Through international periodicals such as “Le Rire”, “L’Asiette au Beurre”, German “Simplissimus” and British “Punch”, Storm becomes acquainted with satirical drawing and modern art of the highest quality.

Many of the artists that Storm admires are artists he learns about from the foreign periodicals. Over the years he draws an entire portrait gallery of his “heroes”. They are a very motley crew of illustrators, experimental pictorial artists, authors etc. Storm does not differentiate whether an artist was a satirical illustrator or a pioneer of expressionism. He studies their style and transforms the inspiration in his own works.

As you can see, politics, art and gender roles are the major issues in the periodicals.

STORM P. og kvinderne

Art and inspiratioN

paris Storm falls right into the witches’ cauldron of Paris in 1906 when the city is seething with decadence, art and madness. Here he starts to paint; inspired by the maelstrom of art he finds himself in. The trip is paid by a grant – won through a random lottery held by the Actors’ Guild. He sets off with intentions of studying theatre and acting. But he becomes caught up in painting, modern life, the people he meets, the cabarets, the bohemian life and the free life of the artist. The offbeat characters the come out after dark; prostitutes, criminals, performers and buskers become motives that he brings home to Denmark.

During and after his trip to Paris, Storm produces a series of women’s portraits in oil. Common to them is that Storm experiments with a modernistic and expressive style. It looks like he is not attempting to draw likenesses but is more interested in the women as pure shape and surface. Nothing could be further from Storm’s mind than a naturalistic expression. He experiments

Moulin Rouge 1909

STORM P. og kvinderne

Art and inspiratioN

with colour and shape inspired by what he sees in modern paintings.

The made-up, white, almost mask-like faces do not show many traces of expression or personality. By emphasizing the colours of the face and body and the shape and architecture, he paints types rather than actual portraits. The distinctly female attributes – red lips, bosom and figure – are enhanced in a crude and expressive style.

Sketches from Paris 1906

Study for Salome, 1908

STORM P. og kvinderne

Art and inspiratioN

EDVARD MUNCH At many points of his life, Storm is caught up in the choice between being a “proper” artist or a humourist and illustrator. All through his life, he is interested in art and one of his major role models is the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch.

From a very young age, Storm is fascinated by Edvard Munch’s expressive painting style, such as it can be found in the work “Envious”. Storm P. also tries to imitate the painful and ambivalent relationship between men and women in Munch’s art. The gloomy, the expressive, the skeletal people and the violent way of painting become the first proper “style” in Storm P.’s paintings.

Storm actually gets to meet Munch. Late one evening in the fall of 1908 there is a knock at the door to Storm’s small attic apartment. Outside is the poet Sigurd Mathisen and behind him the famous Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, Storm’s great role model.

Munch is on a trip from a nerve clinic in Hornbæk and has only met Storm briefly in Copenhagen a few days earlier. But maybe he had a feeling that Storm was an uplifting acquaintance that might ease his troubled mind. A small drawing that Storm made of Munch is testimony of the meeting.

STORM P. og kvinderne

Art and inspiratioN

JOHANNES HOLBEK AND JAMES ENSOR Two of Storm’s many artistic role models are the symbolist illustrator Johannes Holbek and the Belgian artist James Ensor.

Early in the 20th century, Storm’s style is inspired by Holbek’s organic lines and Art Nouveau-ish ornamentation. Holbek is the inspiration for “Salome” while the motif refers to the biblical story of the beautiful Salome. She was a seductress who demanded John the Baptist’s head on a plate in return for dancing before King Herod. Salome is a motif that Storm uses several times.

A little later – in 1919 – Storm finds inspiration in the Belgian artist James Ensor. He is known for a grotesque and satirical world of skeletons and diabolical figures.

The twisted and nightmarish fascinates Storm – also in his pictures of women where the twisted and spooky is distinctly there. You can find it in “Sladder (Gossip)”, “Nattespøgelser (Nightly Ghosts)” and “Lasterne (the Vices)”.

STORM P. og kvinderne

Art and inspiratioN

THE STYLE AND MANNER OF THE FLIES The Daily Fly was a cartoon printed in the newspaper B.T. every day from 1939 to 1949. The “fly” is a drawing accompanied by a short text that subtly deals with the small and large questions of everyday life, often with two gentlemen in conversation as the motif. Often the connection between text and image is not quite clearcut.

The “style” of the flies is a story in itself. During all of Storm’s oeuvre he plays with the line and the shading.

But this is where the many years of experience are expressed most clearly. It is as if Storm “blows up” the usual form of the drawing with these crazy shadings, patterns and shapes. Often we find clear references to modern art and the drawings may be both totally abstract, Art Nouveau or collages.

He has cut out women from books, newspapers and magazines, modified them and glued them into the drawing to make them fuse. This causes an odd clash

- I remember when cakes only cost five pennies.

- Yes, but that was when we still had the five-penny-piece!

Dagens Flue 16. okt. 1941

STORM P. og kvinderne

Art and inspiratioN

between the ornamented Victorian beauties and the slightly caricatured men. This creates a further ironic distance between the sexes and provides a successful comical effect.

A peculiarity is that the cut-out women that Storm uses – both in the 1930s and 1940s – are old-fashioned Victorian drawings. The women are from before 1914 when they dressed very differently than in the 1930s.

However, in the Flies we also find women who unlike the cut-outs have been drawn by Storm P. himself. And they are contemporary types in modern clothes. But even so they become comical because Storm is interested in the shapes of the fashion and of the women; the strange hats, patterns and dress shapes.

- You do try to conserve the gas, don’t you?

- Oh yes. We have an electric kitchen

Dagens Flue 8. feb. 1945

STORM P. og kvinderne

STORM, MADS AND ELLEN

STORM P. AND THE WOMEN Storm’s diaries from his youth bear witness to several lady friends and tempestuous infatuations – in his parents’ mind maybe a little too many lady friends. In several sittings and for many years, Storm kept a diary and many girls’ names come and go in these years of his youth. 6th August 1900, he wrote: “I am so strangely ill at ease today. It is probably because Father has learned that I am seeing so many girls, by I reckon I will improve with age. Long live “Love”.”

However, only the two wives are looked at in this exhibition. They appear as two very different types who also represent two different periods in Storm’s life – the young bohemian artist’s life in the attic room and the later withdrawn life as an illustrator in the large villa at Asgårdsvej.

Mads appears as the love of Storm’s life and his muse – a love story against all odds, frowned upon by their

STORM P. og kvinderne

STORM, MADS AND ELLEN

surroundings but nevertheless ending in marriage and many years of happy life together before her death in 1924.

Ellen was Storm’s second and last wife; a woman who created the framework for her husband’s workplace and home at Asgårdsvej and his success as a popular illustrator. She was the “organizer” who made sure that he was not disturbed in his work. After Storm’s death in 1949 and for the rest of her own life she was deeply dedicated to preserving Storm’s art for the next generations and to creating a museum for his works.

She kept meticulous lists and filed his whole collection of drawings and works. She also continuously bought back paintings that he had sold earlier to preserve them for this collection. In her will, she left the whole collection, the many thousands of drawings, paintings, artefacts and collections of books and periodicals to a foundation that later resulted in the creation of the Storm P. Museum.

Both marriages are illustrated through many photos, letters, diaries and drawings that Storm has kept. This exhibition show excerpts from letters and chosen photos from the two marriages with the two very different women.

STORM P. og kvinderne

STORM, MADS AND ELLEN

MADS’ STORY Mads’ story and the start of her life is rather typical for the times; born in a working class home, a few years of school and married at an early age.

Lydia Clementine Angelica Sørensen was born in 1859 and grew up in Christianshavn. Her father was a craftsman. She was married twice before she met Storm.

First to Petersen, who was a butcher and later to another butcher – Orla Pfeiffer – with whom she had two children.

None of the marriages were particularly happy and she was the one to seek divorce both times, stating among other things rough treatment as a cause.

In the young Robert she found love in the shape of a totally different type of husband than she had known before: A sensitive young artist to whom she became a muse.

Photo of Mads in her youth. Storm P. has written on it “Sweet little musse”

STORM P. og kvinderne

STORM, MADS AND ELLEN

THE LETTERS Storm and Mads met in the butchers’ milieu early in 1901. He was 18 years old and she was 41.

For a long time, they tried to keep the relationship a secret. A common friend acted as their courier and brought secret letters from one to the other.

This has ensured that the relationship is elucidated through a larger collection of letters. For the rest of his life, Storm kept the memory of Mads in the shape of more than 200 of the many letters she had sent him.

Supposedly, he sent just as many letters to her but only a few of those have survived.

During their relationship, Storm travelled to England, America and Paris and during these travels there are particularly many letters. Storm and Mads found it difficult to be separated and particularly the trip to America in 1919 was difficult for Storm.

STORM P. og kvinderne

STORM, MADS AND ELLEN

In the letters, Mads often writes directly, without nonsense and with great honesty about her love for him; a love that she realizes is “wrong” in the eyes of the world. You sense a doubt in her. Can it really be true that this younger gentleman loves her? She often talks of him as “Blue Eyes”; his eyes were blue but perhaps it was also a hint about his naïve and candid view of the world and of their relationship?

Storm’s letters are written in a differently pompous and very passionate language. He often refers to her as “Wild Rose”.

The small attic apartment in Jernbanegade where Mads moved in with Storm in 1906.

I

Storm and Mads in Søllerød where they lived for about a year in 1919-1920.

STORM P. og kvinderne

STORM, MADS AND ELLEN My own darling girl.

Now Father has once again spoken to me about our relationship and I have given him my solemn promise – and invoked God as a witness – that I shall never, never set foot in your rooms – I wonder whether I can keep the promise – when it comes to love I am so weak – in the love that binds me to you – you whom I shall never fail – then let the promise I made to Father be faithful and strong – let us be devoted to one another until the time comes when we own one another – and it must come. I love you – love you forever and faithful – believe in this and be my faithful mistress – if you are unfaithful because of my absence – no – no and again no – you are true to me – you love me.

STORM P. og kvinderne

STORM, MADS AND ELLEN

ELLEN On a trip to Fanø in 1920, Storm meets Ellen. She is a milliner and owns a shop at Fanø, started as a summer shop for the Copenhagen holidaymakers.

Ellen and Storm had a summer romance at Fanø and Storm never forgets it. On 29th October 1925 – the year after Mads’ death – they are married in Gentofte Church.

After the wedding, Ellen and Storm move into a house in Smallegade 3 with Mads’ granddaughter Grethe.

Later they move to Asgårdsvej 17 in a large villa with a garden where Storm in his older age retreats more and more from the world and from his fame. He stops performing and still spends the nights sitting at his work table, drawing, thinking and writing.

”“Animals, flowers and old books – my home, my wife and my dogs; that’s my personal life. Nothing else. The buffoon that people imagine me to be in my private life as well; he doesn’t exist.”

Interview on the occasion of Storm’s 60th birthday.

STORM P. og kvinderne

STORM, MADS AND ELLEN

THE LOVE BOOK Because of his productivity, his tight schedule and the daily deadlines for drawings for next day’s papers, Storm often sit up drawing all night. He sleeps till late in the morning. Often Ellen and Storm are not awake at the same time so they write small greetings to each other in a fat notebook – “The Love Book”.

The little drawings, greetings and declarations of love are testimony to a loving relationship and a quiet everyday life marked by routines but also by a heavy workload.

The declarations of love are more straightforward and not wrapped in poetic expressions and pompous words like his youthful letters to Mads.

My little home – let me keep it – here is my love, my El – my dogs, birds, peace and happiness – work – joy in every little thing.

28th January 1941