Downfall
Danish art was well served by the presence of foreign artists at the Academy until there was a reaction to foreigners in 1771-1772 after both the ouster of German Johann Friedrich Struensee from the Danish Royal Court, and Swedish King Gustav III's coup d'état which turned Danes against Sweden.
On 31 August 1772 Pilo received the newly established Cross of the Knights of the Order of Vasa by a Swedish emissary of Gustav III, which required Pilo to take an oath of allegiance to Sweden, the land of his birth. This was considered unacceptable for someone in service to the King of Denmark, and the ensuing royal intrigues cost him his position.
On 10 September he was ordered by Hereditary Prince Frederick to travel within two days to Schleswig to paint a life-size portrait of the King’s sister Louise, her husband Carl Count of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel), and their children.
Pilo rejected the assignment the same day, and asked to take his resignation, which was accepted on 17 September. Thus he lost his position, ending a career of over 30 years of service to the Danish crown.
On 21 September he received orders to leave the country within 3–4 weeks. Pilo felt that he was set up in court intrigues by Ove Høegh-Guldberg, a central figure in the court ruling Denmark at the time, Peder Als and Secretary of the Cabinet Andreas Schumacher. Als had been one of Pilo’s best students, and had traveled to Rome and Paris, bringing back a strongly Italian-inspired painting style that became the rage. Als criticism of the foreign element within the Academy helped lead not only to the downfall of Pilo himself, but to the disappearance of the many French artists at the Academy in the years after 1770.
Read more about this topic: Carl Gustaf Pilo
Famous quotes containing the word downfall:
“Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart’s drama and the negative meaning of history.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)
“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)