An hour earlier this was an almost deserted square in fashionable Kultorvet. It is a dull drizzly morning in September and nothing ever happens here..........Until Now!

A solitary shout echoing between the tall buildings has marked the beginning of this unwelcome drama. "FIRE! FIRE!" Another passer by, notices thick smoke emerging from window round the corner, and runs pell mell to raise the alarm. With the same reaction as a ship doomed at sea, in a flash - there are people everywhere - emerging after warning yells of impending danger.

Hearts would be thumping with immediate fear for their own and their families' safety. "What about the old people next door?" Now the cries are getting louder for everyone to get out rapidly and in an orderly fashion. The sound of scurrying feet and clumping boots down endless staircases drown out the distant clanging of bells from the fire carts. I can't hear them yet! Will they be in time?

Now the square outside is packed with onlookers watching the progress of the unforgiving and seemingly uncontrollable flames. Soon, more smoke and even fiercer flames emerge from an upstairs apartment. The burning timbers are heard crackling as they react to the vicious heat. As this untamable fire spreads into adjoining rooms, the Copenhagen fire brigade, with its horse drawn pump engine is already prepared with a head of steam, arrives without a moment to spare. There are three major stars of attraction to this tense scenario; the snorting, now fidgety horses which run the marathon; the magnificent polished brass pumps; and the fireman who rings the bell. For he is the envy of every schoolboy! The brakes on the bright scarlet wheels had to be the biggest in the land. They had to cope with stopping a huge weight.

The gathering crowds have been forcibly pushed back. The firemen, so well trained and organised, are starting to wheel up the ladders. Others unreel the tightly packed hoses - connecting them to the fire hydrants and pumping engine - then at last running them out to the ladders. It is the finest military discipline to be seen by onlookers, and a procedure rehearsed to absolute perfection. Each man has his set responsibility for this team operation; ironically too in 1900, it takes a fire to put out a fire! The stoker and his back-up crew have brought their burning coals and fuel supplies from the fire station. For this superb water pump always has to be at the ready.

Just an hour before in an upstairs kitchen, somehow an insecure stove-screen may have been the cause - left unattended for just a moment - perhaps a crying child had innocently caused a distraction? Now it would be too late for a pail of water to quelch the fast-travelling flames. The room could have caught alight in moments. Eye-smarting smoke would fill the space and start oozing out of the window with its message of worse to come. The only thing to do is to evacuate the apartment IMMEDIATELY; no time for other things, JUST THE FAMILY AND PETS.

Thankfully here in this painter's dramatic observations there is little danger to life, so the brigade's prime objective will be to rapidly bring the fire under control, and particularly to save the neighbouring properties. They will work efficiently and calmly until every last charred piece of timber is drenched into submission.
While the leading fireman scales the ladder, others pay out the long hose up to him. Ultimate water pressure is generated by this gleaming and magnificent cylindrical brass pump. It is a wonderful and highly effective machine, with its now sweat-covered taps, gauges and pipes, smoothly hissing in co-ordinated activity. This pump engine would have been treated like an icon by the firemen who would have spent many hours polishing its mirror-like brass surface. The shiny red paintwork kept glistening to be shown off to such a large and appreciative audience.
There are few artists who can portray brass - and even fewer with such talent to depict the ferocity of a glowing furnace. Nothing seems to be left out in this painting; even the fireman standing by oiling the machine's moving parts. See the other firemen arriving in the background. Feel the mass excitement of now hundreds of onlookers, like those at a football match. Some lucky ones don't even have to strain to see what's going on, because they unwittingly bought seats on the top of the horse-drawn bus. Every spectator is transfixed to the spot .............just waiting and watching!

Few of them - perhaps just those who know the now homeless victims and other residents here - will be genuinely concerned. The majority will enjoy the spectacle like a music-hall show - witnessing but unaffected by the major disaster happening to someone else. The reaction is still the same the whole world over.

Such was this day in Copenhagen in 1900; memorable to many then, and captured by the artist for posterity.

Paul Fischer was a painter and sculptor, he studied at the Academy of Copenhagen and later exhibited portraits and genre subjects, He also chose to paint market and street scenes as this one. He was known too for his bathing beauty pictures which are available from my collection in larger sizes. He worked with Kroyer, and spent much time with the other Scandinavian artists at Skagen in northern Jutland.