\n<\/p>\n
Once upon a time, there was a princess in Denmark who aspired to become an artist.<\/p>\n
Though she was the eldest child of the country\u2019s reigning king, for the first 12 years of the princess\u2019s life, only men had the right to inherit the throne. That changed when the Danish constitution was amended in 1953, and the princess became her father\u2019s presumptive heir soon after turning 13. She continued to pursue her interest in art throughout her teenage years, producing drawings by the stacks before largely stopping in her 20s.<\/p>\n
Around the time the princess turned 30 \u2014 and after she had earned<\/a> a diploma in prehistoric archaeology at the University of Cambridge, and had studied at Aarhus University in Denmark, the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics \u2014 she read J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s \u201cThe Lord of the Rings.\u201d It inspired her to start drawing again.<\/p>\n Not long after, upon her father\u2019s death in 1972<\/a>, the princess was crowned as queen: Queen Margrethe II of Denmark<\/a>, to be specific.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Margrethe, now 83, celebrated 50 years on the throne in 2022. But in assuming the role of queen, she did not abandon her artistic passions. As a monarch she has taken lessons in certain media, has taught herself others and has been asked to bring her eye to projects produced by the Royal Danish Ballet and by Tivoli<\/a>, one of the world\u2019s oldest amusement parks, in Copenhagen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Her paintings have been shown at museums, including in a recent exhibition at the Mus\u00e9e Henri-Martin<\/a> in Cahors, France. And her illustrations have been adapted into artwork for a Danish translation of \u201cThe Lord of the Rings.\u201d (They were published under the pseudonym Ingahild Grathmer, and the book\u2019s publisher approached her about using them after she sent copies to Tolkien as fan mail in 1970.)<\/p>\n Margrethe recently notched another creative accomplishment: serving as the costume and production designer<\/a> for \u201cEhrengard: The Art of Seduction,\u201d a feature film that debuted on Netflix in September and has wardrobes and sets based on her drawings and other artworks.<\/p>\n The film is an adaptation of the fairy tale \u201cEhrengard\u201d by Karen Blixen<\/a>, a Danish baroness who published under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Set in a fictional kingdom, the story is loosely about a woman named Ehrengard who becomes a lady-in-waiting and foils a royal court painter\u2019s plot to woo her.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was great fun,\u201d Margrethe said of working on the film in an interview in August at the Ch\u00e2teau de Cayx<\/a>, the Danish royal family\u2019s estate in Luzech, a village near Cahors in the South of France.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI hope that Blixenites will accept the way we\u2019ve done it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The Netflix adaptation, a sort of fantasy dramedy produced by the company SF Studios<\/a>, has been more than a decade in the making.<\/p>\n JJ Film, a Danish production company also behind it, approached Margrethe about working on the movie after she served as production designer for two shorter films it produced, \u201cThe Snow Queen\u201d and \u201cThe Wild Swans,\u201d which were both adapted from Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales. Those films, released on Danish television in 2000 and 2009, also featured sets based on artworks by Margrethe, who in 2010 became an honorary member of the Danish Designers for Stage and Screen union.<\/p>\n For the Netflix film, the queen designed 51 costumes and made 81 decoupages \u2014 a type of cut-and-paste artwork<\/a> \u2014 that were used as the basis for sets. (She was not paid by the production companies.) Her sketches, along with some of the clothes and many of the decoupages, are being shown at the Karen Blixen Museum<\/a> just outside Copenhagen through next April. Afterward, there are plans to show them in New York, Washington and Seattle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n To compose the decoupages, the queen cut up images of various landscapes and interiors and pasted the pieces together to create new scenes, like a sumptuous sitting room and a rocky canyon with a fortress and a waterfall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cSometimes it takes hours, and sometimes things want to come together and they do as you want them to do, and suddenly you\u2019ve done a whole decoupage in an afternoon,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n She was guided by Blixen\u2019s \u201cvery visual writing,\u201d she said, noting that Blixen, as well as Tolkien and Andersen, were writers who also painted or drew.<\/p>\n Bille August<\/a>, 74, the film\u2019s director, described the queen\u2019s decoupages as a \u201ctuning fork\u201d that he used to build \u201ca world that is detached from reality without being a full-on fairy tale.\u201d (He compared the general visual style he sought to the tone of Baz Luhrmann\u2019s \u201cMoulin Rouge!<\/a>\u201d)<\/p>\n \u201cConjuring that special atmosphere is perhaps the queen\u2019s greatest achievement here,\u201d Mr. August said.<\/p>\n Scouts would seek locations that reflected the decoupages, which set designers would then style with props to further emulate the artworks. Elements in the decoupages that couldn\u2019t be found were rendered using computer-generated imagery. Some decoupages were scanned and details from the artworks were added to scenes in postproduction.<\/p>\n Blixen did not set \u201cEhrengard\u201d in a specific time, giving Margrethe freedom to interpret the look of the costumes. She chose to base her designs on clothes from the Biedermeier<\/a> period in Austria and other parts of central and northern Europe<\/a>, which took place from 1815 to 1848.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Anne-Dorthe Eskildsen, 56, the film\u2019s costume supervisor, said she generally translated Margrethe\u2019s sketches \u201cone to one\u201d when fabricating the garments, which were made with textiles and trimmings that the queen helped select.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Margrethe said that for one costume she had sketched \u2014 a dress in hunter green with pink paisley-like specks \u2014 she had hoped to find a sprigged fabric. \u201cBut we couldn\u2019t find one,\u201d she said, so the pattern was custom printed. Another costume designed for the film\u2019s grand duchess character was inspired by a portrait of a French queen.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was wearing a lovely get-up,\u201d Margrethe said. \u201cIt seemed to me exactly what the grand duchess should be wearing.\u201d<\/p>\n Certain elements of the costumes, like leg-of-mutton sleeves, reflected fashion at the time of the Biedermeier period. \u201cI quite like that style,\u201d Margrethe said. \u201cI\u2019ve been interested in style and in the history of style and costume for a very long time.\u201d<\/p>\n Other details were less historically accurate: Some dresses had waistlines that were slightly lower than those typical of that era, to give them a more flattering fit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mikkel Boe Folsgaard<\/a>, 39, the actor who played the court painter, Cazotte, said that when Margrethe saw an early version of his costume, she thought it lacked color. \u201cAnd she was clear about exactly which colors she wanted to see,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The actress Alice Bier Zanden, 28, who played the title role of Ehrengard in the film, said that at a costume fitting attended by Margrethe, the queen\u2019s enthusiasm was palpable. \u201cYou\u2019re just smitten by it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Sidse Babett Knudsen<\/a>, 54, who played the grand duchess, described the queen\u2019s presence at the fitting this way: \u201cbare legs, beautiful shoes, nice jewelry \u2014 smoking away.\u201d (Margrethe has made no secret<\/a> of her fondness<\/a> for cigarettes<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Knudsen added that she felt comfortable \u201cclowning around\u201d in front of Margrethe, who has generally been popular in Denmark. According to a 2021 poll by YouGov Denmark<\/a>, she was the most admired woman in the country (the most admired man was Barack Obama), and in a 2013 Gallup poll<\/a> conducted for Berlingske, Denmark\u2019s oldest newspaper<\/a>, 82 percent of participants agreed or partly agreed that the country benefits from the monarchy.<\/p>\n Her critics have included members of her family. Prince Joachim, the younger of her two sons, bristled at her recent decision to shrink the monarchy<\/a> by stripping his children of their royal titles. In 2017 her husband, Prince Henrik, announced<\/a> that he did not wish to be buried beside Margrethe because he had never been given the titles king or king consort. (He died six months later.<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Helle Kannik Haastrup, 58, an associate professor of film and media studies at the University of Copenhagen, who specializes in celebrity culture, said that some detractors have dismissed Margrethe as \u201ca Sunday painter.\u201d<\/p>\n But to other people, Professor Haastrup added, the fact that Margrethe is a head of state with a \u201cside hustle\u201d has made her more relatable.<\/p>\n Margrethe sketches and makes art at the chateau in France and at studios at Amalienborg Palace and Fredensborg Palace, the royal family\u2019s residences in Denmark. She described the studios as places \u201cwhere I can let things lie about,\u201d adding, \u201cI try to clear them up occasionally \u2014 but not too often!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI work when I can find the time,\u201d she said, \u201cand I seem usually to be able to find the time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes, I think people are at their wit\u2019s end because I\u2019m trying to do these two things at the same time,\u201d Margrethe said of her royal duties and her creative undertakings. \u201cBut it usually works, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n Annelise Wern, one of the queen\u2019s four ladies-in-waiting, said, \u201cHonestly, she can\u2019t stop.\u201d<\/p>\n In the 1980s, when she was in her 40s, Margrethe took weekly painting lessons. She has mostly concentrated on painting landscapes with watercolors and acrylics \u2014 or \u201clazy girl\u2019s oils,\u201d as she called them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Then, in the early 1990s, she started cutting up pages from The World of Interiors<\/a> magazines and catalogs from auction houses like Christie\u2019s and Sotheby\u2019s and using the paper cutouts to decorate objects.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t even know there was a smart name for it,\u201d she said, referring to decoupage. \u201cI called it \u2018cutting and sticking.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Since then, her relatives have occasionally been \u201csmothered in decoupage,\u201d as she jokingly put it. And in needlepoint, which she had learned as a girl and picked up again later in life.<\/p>\n Her colorful needlepoint designs, some of which were recently featured in an exhibition at the Museum Kolding in Kolding, Denmark,<\/a> have been fashioned into purses for family members and have been used to upholster fireplace screens, footstools and cushions for the royal family\u2019s yacht, Dannebrog<\/a>, which shares its name with the Danish flag.<\/p>\n Margrethe\u2019s taste for bold colors can be also seen in her wardrobe. In a 1989 biography of the queen by the Danish journalist Anne Wolden-Raethinge, Margrethe said: \u201cI always dream in color. At full blast. Technicolor. Everywhere. Every shade.\u201d<\/p>\n Her clothes often feature vivid prints and fur trims, and are almost always accessorized with jewelry. Among the items in her personal collection are gold pieces by the Danish jewelers Arje Griegst<\/a> and Torben Hardenberg<\/a>, whose designs are both baroque and gothic-punk, and costume jewelry like plastic clip-on earrings<\/a> she found at a Danish drugstore.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For her 80th birthday, in 2020, Margrethe had a gown made using velvet that she had requested be dyed a particular shade of sky blue. A floral raincoat<\/a> she had made with a waxed fabric meant for tablecloths, which she picked out at the department store Peter Jones & Partners in London, has inspired<\/a> other fashion designers\u2019 collections.<\/p>\n \u201cI usually am quite deeply involved,\u201d she said of having clothes made for her.<\/p>\n Ulf Pilgaard<\/a>, 82, a Danish stage and screen actor, has parodied the queen some dozen times over the decades. (He was knighted by Margrethe in 2007.) \u201cI always wore earrings and a necklace and very nice colorful outfits,\u201d Mr. Pilgaard said.<\/p>\n For his last turn as Margrethe, in 2021, he wore a bright yellow dress with oversize pearl earrings and a chunky turquoise ring. At the end of the performance, she surprised him onstage.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople got on their feet and started roaring and clapping,\u201d he said. \u201cFor a few seconds, I thought it was all for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At the premiere of \u201cEhrengard: The Art of Seduction\u201d in Copenhagen last month, Margrethe wore a pantsuit in the red color of the Danish flag (and the Netflix logo), along with a hefty turquoise brooch<\/a> and matching earrings<\/a> by Mr. Hardenberg, who before starting his namesake jewelry line made costumes and props for theater and film productions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Nanna Fabricius, 38, a Danish singer and songwriter known as Oh Land, who has worked alongside Margrethe on recent productions at Tivoli, said, \u201cI think a very big part of why the queen is so liked is because she does things.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe aren\u2019t totally surprised when she makes a Netflix movie,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s kind of what Barbie wants to be,\u201d Ms. Fabricius said. \u201cShe does it all.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nConjuring Atmospheres<\/h2>\n
\u2018Honestly, She Can\u2019t Stop\u2019<\/h2>\n