Background
Erik Henningsen was born on 29 August 1855 in Copenhagen to Frants Ludvig Henningsen (1820–1869), a grocer, and Hilda Charlotte Christine née Schou (1824–1880).
Erik Henningsen was born on 29 August 1855 in Copenhagen to Frants Ludvig Henningsen (1820–1869), a grocer, and Hilda Charlotte Christine née Schou (1824–1880).
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
He is best known for his Social Realist paintings of poor and exposed groups in the 1880s and 1890s. He was the younger brother of Frants Henningsen who was also a painter. He showed an early artistic talent and was articled to decorative painter A. Hellesen.
He also took drawing lessons privately with C. V. Nielsen and was admitted to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1873.
His travels took him to Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands. Henningsen became part of the group Bogstaveligheden, a forum for the Realists" humanitarian ideals about creating a better society through illumination and debate.
In his paintings from the 1880s and 1890s, Henningsen was preoccupied with the rights and living conditions of groups such as the unemployed, women, workers, children and the elderly. The infanticide (1886, The Hirschsprung Collection and
He also depicted the lighter aspects of human life, as in his paintings of street life in Copenhagen.
Towards the turn of the centory Henningsen mainly painted historical scenes. An example is his mural in the banquet hall of the University of Copenhagen"s main building on Vor Frue Plads in Copenhagen. lieutenant depicts the banquet at the Scandinavian Scientist Conference held in Roskilde in 1847.
lieutenant completed a series of murals depicting the history of the university of which the earlier painting had been created by Vilhelm Marstrand, Carl Bloch and Vilhelm Rosenstand.
During the two first decades of the 20th century he mainly painted genre works from the lives of the bourgeoisie.