Popular end wall mural acquires a colourful neighbour

Copenhagen’s master painters and decorators have, with a grant from VILLUM FONDEN, donated a new end wall mural opposite Henry Heerup’s mural extolling the virtues of milk at Sølvgades Skole in central Copenhagen. The artist Jeppe Eisner has created a fabulous narrative about the city and its painters and decorators. At the same time, Heerup’s end wall mural has been freshened up.

16.06.2022 l More news

On Thursday, one of Copenhagen’s oldest and best-known end wall murals received a new, colourful neighbour. After several years of work, Copenhagen’s guild of painters and decorators has realised the idea of having a mural on the wall opposite Henry Heerup’s ‘milk mural’ at Sølvgades Skole. At the same time, Heerup’s 70-year-old mural has been restored, and now stands as good as new.

The new mural has been created to mark the 400th anniversary of the city’s painters and decorators’ guild. The leaders of the guild are delighted to have made such a decorative mark on the cityscape that pays homage to their profession.  

“We cannot imagine a more suitable gift for Copenhagen, which for 400 years has been a workplace for our association of professional masters and decorators. And a city that we have been contributing to for just as long,” says Per Vangekjær, master of Copenhagen’s guild of painters and decorators. 

The guild was established to provide a social and financial safeguard for master, journeyman and apprentice painters and decorators, and is today a local association under the main organisation, the Danish Federation of Master Painters.
The guild received funding for the new mural from VILLUM FONDEN, which proposed that Henry Heerup’s end wall mural should be freshened up at the same time, and the guild agreed.     

The mural was unveiled at a festive event held between the two murals in the school playground at Sølvgades Skole. The gift was received by the actor Nicolas Bro on behalf of all Copenhageners. The pupils from Sølvgades Skole also participated of course.
And the new end wall mural is a gift that will endure, because the guild’s building painters have ensured that it will last for the next 30 years.

For Jeppe Eisner, the artist behind the new end wall mural painting, it has been a real honour being able to mark his mark on the end wall at Sølvgades Skole. In fact, it’s an old dream come true. 

“Forty-eight years ago, I was in Sølvgade looking up at Heerup’s mural and thought to myself: ‘When I grow up, I want to paint an end wall mural like that’,” recalls Jeppe Eisner, whose children have also attended Sølvgades Skole.  

The artist has drawn his inspiration from the history of the guild and Copenhagen as well as from numerous bicycle rides around the city to establish the impact of the painting and decorators’ trade in a cultural context. 

“I hope the painting can make people just as curious about the history of the city’s painters and decorators as I have recently become along the way,” says Jeppe Eisner.

All the small scenes that make up the mural are packed with what the schoolchildren call ‘Easter eggs’ – little secrets and allusions. For example, two of Sølvgades Skole’s caretakers can be found portrayed among the crew on board Christian IV’s flagship Trefoldigheden.   

Heerup’s more figurative end wall mural was also found to contain various secrets. When the painting was being cleaned, it was discovered that the brown bottle had originally been depicted taler and slimmer, just as the sails of the windmill are now slightly shorter than when they were first painted. The changes were presumably made by the artist himself, as he was involved in a major restoration of the end wall in the 1970s.