EDVARD ERIKSEN (DANISH 1876-1959)
THE LITTLE MERMAID
£18,750
Auction: 8 April 2009 at 11:30 BST
Description
Bronze and stone, signed and dated 1948
Dimensions
bronze 74cm high, overall 97cm high
Footnote
Note:
The Little Mermaid is the main character from Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the same name, written in 1836, which tells the story of a mermaid who was willing to give up her life in the sea and her identity as a merperson to gain a human soul and the love of a human prince.
Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of the Carlsberg Brewery, saw the ballet of the story, with music composed by Fini Henriques, in 1909 and was so moved by it that he commissioned the sculptor Edvard Eriksen to create The Little Mermaid in bronze. She was modelled with the head of the prima ballerina Ellen Price but, because she refused to model in the nude, the body is that of Eriksen's wife, Eline. The statue was presented to Copenhagen by Jacobsen and was unveiled on 23rd August 1913 at Langelinie in Copenhagen Harbour. Since then she has become a symbol of Copenhagen and a major tourist attraction, as important to the Danes as the Eiffel Tower is to the French or Big Ben to the English.
The statue being sold here is a two thirds size model of the original, cast in bronze and signed and dated 1948. Later reproductions sit on a bronze 'stone' but this Little Mermaid is one of the few which sits on a stone of the same colour, shape and type as that in Copenhagen Harbour.
The father of the current vendors was a vineyard owner in South Africa who exported wine to a number of countries including Denmark. Due to exchange control regulations, his Danish agents, Cherry Heering, had difficulty obtaining foreign currency to pay for one post-war shipment. They proposed that the wine should be paid for by barter and arranged to purchase this model of the Little Mermaid from the sculptor and she was shipped to South Africa. She sat in pride of place at the end of the family's swimming pool in the Cape until the family returned to England in 1964.