From Copenhagen Stock Exchange

From Copenhagen Stock Exchange is a monumental group portrait painting by Peder Severin Krøyer, featuring 50 representatives of the Danish commercial and financial industries gathered in the Great Hall of the Exchange Building in Copenhagen, Denmark. The idea for the painting was conceived by Gustav Adolph Hagemann in 1881 while he was entertaining C. F. Tietgen who was posing for Peder Severin Krøyer's portrait of him. Hagemann presented the idea of four monumental group portrait paintings for the newly refurbished Great Hall in Børsen featuring leading representatives of the trade, industry agriculture and shipping sectors in Denmark. The Exchange Building was selected as the scene for the first of the paintings. The building had been purchased by Grosserer-Societetet in 1857. Krøyer's price for painting it was DKK 20,000 and the plan was to raise the money through contributions from the people seen in it. The price for one of the more prominent locations in the foreground was initially DKK 800 while the price for a location in the middle was DKK 500 and one in the background was DKK 300. It turned out to be more difficult than expected to raise the money and things did not start to move until S. V. Isberg from J. B. Suhr & Søn offered to pay DKK 5,000. This lowered the prices to DKK 500, DKK 300 and DKK 100. The painting was completed in 1895. The original plan of commissioning three more paintings was abandoned. Hagemann did, however, in 1901, commission Men of Industry, as a private commission for his home in Bredgade.