“David Jacobsen was a flat chested man of medium height with a slender oval face, a soft cheekbone beard and modest mustache, a
creamy white skin and smallish eyes. His abundant hair was parted in the middle. His voice was soft as was his whole manner. He wore a well-made coat and vest with wide lapels, a white shirt with a starched bosom and stand-up collar. He was unmarried and had suffered from tuberculosis in his earlier years. He was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen at the age of twenty-three, had studied for two years, then quickly moved into the mainstream of Danish painting.
He had come to Paris with a group of Danish painters to see the Exposition Universelle. The others had absorbed all they wanted and returned home. He had stayed behind. He was Jewish and had sold a few paintings in the Jewish community of Copenhagen. He had complained that his talents were equal to many Danish painters, but that they wouldn’t give commissions to Jewish painters.
Pissarro shared a studio with David; he was neat and unobtrusive, which was to the good; but it was difficult to escape the cyclical bouts of melancholy. Camille did not realize the extent of the man’s despair, since few of their friends sold anything, had exhibitions or backers until David left a letter to his brother Edvard on their eating table:
This winter the draft has made me ill several times during the night. I have not had more to cover me n the winter than in the summer. As you know I do not want debt. I work, but am stopped by need. Oh, I am almost tired of everything. To have to write you like this. But on the other hand it was almost a promise that you would do a little so I could pass the four months of October -January without worry. Maybe I would have sold 1-2 pieces here if I had had gold frames. But without frames nothing can be shown. To suffer like this…
From the Jacobsen family in Copenhagen Camille learned that David had taken his own life by jumping out of the window of his lodgings in Florence. His tuberculosis was fatally advanced and he owed the landlord for rent. His small stove had been given to an Italian friend who had paid for his meals during the winter. David was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Florence. His letters, drawings and paintings were sent home to his brother Edvard.
Depths of Glory, A Biographical Novel of Camille Pissarro by Irving Stone p. 77 & 175 & 320
View some of David Jacobsen’s art
I couldn’t find very much on David Jacobsen on the internet except the fact he committed suicide. He is mentioned so many times in the book as being a friend of Pissarro and shared a studio with him for quite some time. He was very poor and so thin because he couldn’t afford food, so Pissarro often fed him. He was morose and self-doubting.
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