Hansen was born on 27 November 1868 in Copenhagen, the son of Niels Christian Adolph Hansen and Josephine Marie Sophie Buntzen. He graduated from Efterslægtselskabets skole in 1884. He qualified for the College of Advanced Technology in 1886 and taught volapyk.
Career
Hansen began his career in the insurance industry when he in circa 1888 started working for the Vritish life insurance company Greshams' office in Copenhagen. He was just 28 years old when he in 1896 was a driving force behind the foundation of Dansk Folkeforsikringsanstalt. Another life insurance company founded at his initiative, Mundus, which focused on the international market, was less successful. Mundus was in 1905 sold to Hafnia and Hansen was at the same event appointed as one of Hafnia's directors. He contributed to establishing the company as the largest Danish provider of life insurance. He was for a while president of the Danish Association of Life insurance companies. He was also a co-founder of Dana og Danske Phønix. He was also a co-founder of Paris-based La Populaire.
Art collector
Hansen founded his art collection when he acquired his first artworks in 1892. It was initially exclusively focused on 19th century Danish art. Later on, partly assisted by Théodore Duret, he also began to collect French art, benefitting from the favourable situation on the French art market during World War 1. Inn 1918, Wilhelm Hansen together with fellow collector Herman Heilbuth and art dealers Winkel & Magnussen, founded a consortium which was of great importance to the French purchases. Their declared goal was "to Buy and sell works of art with the purpose of bringing good and outstanding art to Scandinavia". For this reason they bought several collections "en bloc" in Paris. His collection included works by artists such as Corot, Courbet, Daumier and Gauguin as well as early works by Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley. The bankruptcy of Landmandsbanken in 1923 forced him to sell part of his collection but some of the most important works were acquired by the Ny Carlsberg Foundation and are now part of the collections of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Hansen was later once again to expand his collection with new acquisitions, In 1918, Hansen founded the French Art Society with the aim of widening the knowledge of French art in Denmark. It arranged a number of exhibitions, culminating with its 1928 exhibition of 19th-century French art in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in 1928, presenting a number of the Louvre's best works, and its exhibition of 18th-century French art at the Charlottenborg Exhibition Building. He was also president of Kunstforeningen in the years [1920–25, He charged Gotfred Tvede with designing a museum building on the Ordrupgaard estate. He opened it to the public in 1918 but closed it again after the sale of part of the collection to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek.
