I was born in Copenhagen the 12th of March
1886. Both my father and mother were artists.
My father, Professor
Martinius Nielsen, was in
his youth an actor in the classical repertoire. He
became the leading and managing
director of the Dagmartheater in Copenhagen, which under
his directorate became the modern literary
stage.
My mother, Oda Nielsen, was actress to the
court of the royal theater in Copenhagen. In her
youth she lived in Paris
and brought home the
great French repertoire from the eighties. Later
she joined the Dagmartheater and the repertoire,
thereon. Her love for the French she kept in
her song (repertoire Yvette Gilbert) and she
also became the interpretress
of the songs of the
Old Danish folklore.
In this tense atmosphere of art, I was brought
up. I remember such men as Ibsen, Bjornsen, Lie,
Grieg, Sinding, Brandes
and many others
probably unknown to the American public. Since early
boyhood I have been drawing. When the Sagas
were read to me I drew down the people
therein. Anything I heard about I tried to put
in situations on paper. I heard much
and saw much
concerning art, but I never really intended to
be an artist myself.
When I was twelve years of age I was taken out
of school and given my own teachers. I had a
vague idea of being a
medical man, but when I
was seventeen I suddenly broke off from books
and went to Paris to study art.
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I lived in Paris at Montparnasse for seven years and I frequented
several schools of art. First the
"Académie Julien" under Jean Paul Laurence; thereafter "Collarossi"
under Kristian Krog, and
several others; the last was Lucien Simon. I worked and lived in the
usual routine of French
school live, always working from nature, but in my hours away from the
school I did drawings
out of my imagination; among these,
"The Book of Death" (unpublished). Or, inspired from
reading, I did drawings to Heine, Verlaine, Hans Andersen. These
drawings, most of them done
in black and white, became numerous and in 1910 they were seen by London
people and an
exhibition was offered by Dowdeswel and Dowdeswel.
In 1911 I left Paris for London. In 1912 I had my first show held by
Dowdeswel and Dowdeswel,
consisting of the drawings done in my Paris days. After this I worked
for England entirely.
To the right, we show
"The Chasm", one of Kay
Nielsen's
illustrations from
"The Book of Death"
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From 1918-1922 I worked on a Danish translation
from the original
"Thousand
Nights and a Night"
(Arabian Nights), unpublished, and in the same
period I
did series of
setting for the
Royal Theater
in Copenhagen: Shakespeare,
"The Tempest";
Oehlenschlaeger, "Aladdin";
Sibelius, "Scaramouche";
Magnussen, "The Dream of
the Poet".
I was brought up in a classical view concerning
art, but I remember I loved the
Chinese
drawings
and carvings in my mother's room brought home
from China
by her father.
And this love for the
works of Art from the East has followed me.
My
artistic wandering
started with the early Italians
over Persia, India, to China.
To the right,
we show one of Kay Nielsen's illustrations
from
his suite for
"Thousand Nights and a Night"
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