Gudrun Jastrau’s Silhouettes 
By Theodor Faaborg 
Gudrun Jastrau is a Danish woman artist of twenty summers, 
who several years ago attracted attention in Denmark and who last 
autumn, when her work was exhibited in London, made a deep im¬ 
pression on British art-lovers. Possessing great native talent, a 
technique developed by persistent hard work, a sure and keen per¬ 
ception, and—last but not least—a fresh charm that pleases by its 
very naturalness, Gudrun Jastrau has already progressed far in that 
field of art which, after being cultivated in the eighteenth century 
and neglected in the nineteenth, seems now in the twentieth to be 
on the verge of a renascence. She has had the advantage of grow 
ing up in a stimulating atmosphere, for her father is himself an ar¬ 
tist of fine fiber, her mother a woman of unusual musical talent. 
In the examples of Gudrun Jastrau’s work reproduced here 
we see what genuinely artistic results she has achieved in three such 
different lines of subjects as flowers, children, and the illustrations to 
Charles Dickens’s stories. In the flower pictures she has produced 
an extremely delicate decorative effect. In her pictures of little gills 
sewing, playing ball, or spinning round in the dance, she has attained 
heights generally reached only by artists who make such subjects 
their specialty. Quite astonishing is the sureness of touch with which 
she has struck the right note in her illustrations to the novels of 
Charles Dickens. In fact it must be said that the young lady has 
to an unusual degree the power of conjuring up the evanescent charm 
in the atmosphere of bygone days. 
It is above all her ability to create atmosphere merely through 
the medium of black and white and the lifelike quality of her out¬ 
lines that give Gudrun Jastrau the preeminent place she occupies 
among the now rather numerous Danish women artists who with 
