Pedagogy, Provocation and Paradox: D enmark's K unstnernes S tudieskole

Abstract The last two decades of the nineteenth century witnessed an apparent revolution in art education in D enmark with the establishment of the ‘Free Schools’, a group of alternative schools that provided students with a choice other than the R oyal A cademy. The most important of these schools, the K unstnernes S tudieskole ( A rtists' S tudy S chool, established in 1882), was subsidised by the government and headed by Laurits Tuxen, P . S . Krøyer, and Kristian Zahrtmann, A cademy‐trained artists who modeled the school's education on the French atelier system. The debate that formed the S tudy S chool was at its core one of democratization, which was perceived to be synonymous with international modernism. Yet its artists functioned within a network of fluid roles designed to openly augment the existing pedagogical structure from within – a specifically D anish phenomenon. This article proposes an alternative framework for late‐nineteenth‐century D anish art education systems that situates the S tudy S chool within the context of D anish culture and as an extension of the social democratic tendencies proliferating at this time, which were significantly influenced by the preacher N . F . S . Grundtvig. D anish artists' actual situation had more to do with assimilating a myriad of local and international impulses into a specifically D anish version of modernism.