Die Familie Waagepetersen

Bendz was 25 when he painted this, and the man at the desk had already bought several of his pictures. Christian Waagepetersen was a Copenhagen wine merchant with a real appetite for art, music and science, and he asked the young painter to record his household. So Bendz caught an ordinary moment. The merchant looks up from his paperwork as his wife Albertine and two of the children come into his study, in the family's own house on Store Strandstraede. This quiet blend of work and family was exactly the ideal that Golden Age Denmark prized. Bendz would not enjoy his own promise for long, since he died two years later, only 28, on a study trip through Italy.