Viggo Madsen was born the 5 March, 1885 at Lyngby, one of the numerous beautiful suburban resorts in the vicinity of Copenhagen. Like his distinguished father, Director Karl Madsen of the Royal Gallery, Viggo Madsen early gave evidence of marked artistic talent, and in 1903 made his entry at Charlottenborg. The following year he became a member of the Frie Udstilling*, the magnet which inevitably draws into its energizing radius the younger and more progressive exponents of Danish art as well as not a few of the older spirits who thereby seek to postpone as long as possible the impending process of fossilization.

In his portraits, genre studies, and landscapes, Viggo Madsen displays no little fresh charm of vision and freedom of hand...