Until the next 29 September, the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando o Madrid (calle Alcalá, 13) presents, within PhotoEspaña 2024, the exhibition A Dane in the Madrid of the Restoration. Christian Franzen.
In September 2023, the first centenary of the death of Christian Franzen (Denmark, 1864-Madrid, 1923), the greatest photographer of the Madrid of the Restoration, was celebrated. To commemorate this date, an exhibition is presented with photographs of the master that are kept in his archives, which are complemented by albums, period books, heliogravures and original platinotypes.
Born in Denmark, Franzen arrived in Spain in the last years of the Bourbon Restoration. At the age of 26 and with a well-learned craft, he left Denmark in 1890 to reside in Madrid. Four years later he established his famous Photographic Gallery in the Calle del Príncipe, in Madrid, where he built his prestigious catalogue of portraits, where you can find members of the royalty and, from the king down, all those who were something in the high society of Madrid at that time.
King of kings and king of photographers, as his advertising proclaimed, was popular not only among members of high society, but also among artists and writers. His friendship with Emilia Pardo Bazán, José María Pereda and especially Pérez Galdós and Joaquín Sorolla has left hundreds of unforgettable portraits, with whom he composed the best Celebrity Gallery of his time.
This exhibition is dedicated to the memory of this extraordinary and forgotten photographer, without whose work we could not understand the history of the Madrid of the Restoration and the Regency, nor the history of photography in Spain.
