Ejnar Hansen was a Danish/American visual artist born in Copenhagen in 1884, the son of Lars Mathias Hansen and Elivine Christine Nilsdr. He was a notable figure painter in Southern California during the years between the wars.

     In Denmark Hansen studied at the Teknisk Skole and the Royal Academy of Art from 1903–1910 while working as a journeyman painter. This double career in the commercial and fine arts continued until the 1940s. In Denmark he was a member of the secessionist group De Tretten (The Thirteen), which advocated revolutionary modernist art.

     After immigrating to the United States in 1914, he settled in the Midwest, exhibiting and winning awards for his portraits at the annual exhibitions of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1925 he moved to California and the following year settled in Pasadena. He soon established himself as one of the most talented modern artists in Southern California, winning first prize at the Los Angeles Museum of Art Show in 1927.

     In 1929 Hansen did mural work for the Adamson House in Malibu, which later was converted into a historic site and museum. In the late 1930s he began supporting himself by teaching, first at Chouinard Art Institute from 1937–1940, then at Pomona College in Claremont, the Pasadena School of Arts, and John Muir College in Los Angeles. He was also active in the California Water Color Society, serving as its vice-president and president in the late 1930s as well as a founding member of Pasadena Society of Artists.

     He exhibited his works outside California including at the Art Institute of Chicago, the 1939 New York World's Fair, at Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art, and at the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco. In 1956 a retrospective exhibitions of Hansen's work was held at the Pasadena Art Museum. Following his death, there was a centenary retrospective in 1984 at the James M. Hansen gallery in Santa Barbara.

     Hansen’s art was generally somber, moody, and tending toward the melancholy, which aligned him with Scandinavian artists such as Edvard Munch. Although Hansen’s figure paintings were the most sought after, he also produced still-lifes and landscapes. All of his California-period paintings reveal Hansen as a modernist in his manipulation of form, space, and composition, and the figure paintings also demonstrate his mastery of characterization. Hansen’s son, Jorgen Hansen (1922–2008), was also a notable painter and art teacher in Southern California.        

     The artist is represented in these public institutions:

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art

• The Pasadena Museum of California Art

• Laguna Art Museum

• San Diego Art Museum

• The Carnegie Art Museum (Oxnard, CA)

• Brigham Young University Museum of Art

• The Smithsonian Archives of American Art
  (Ejnar Hansen papers)