Near the top of our list of exhibitions we want to go and see: retrospectives of relatively neglected women artists. Also right up there: Nordic painters we would like to learn more about. So it's no surprise we were keen to explore Harriet Backer (1845-1932): The Music of Colours at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Backer was Norway's most renowned female painter of the 19th century, if little known outside her homeland. We must have seen her work in the past in the old National Museum in Oslo, but she'll have been one of many unfamiliar names. Now, though, she's getting the full retrospective treatment with a show that's already been seen in the Norwegian capital and in Stockholm. Backer's paintings are mostly intimate depictions of interiors, both domestic and church. There's a calmness to them, and often a very interesting treatment of light, with Impressionism showing an influence from time she spent in France. One or two of the pictures on show are
Denmark: We know what you're thinking when you hear about Denmark. You're thinking hygge, even if you don't quite know what it is. You're thinking Nordic noir. Or maybe you're just thinking pastries.
But we're thinking about painting. Because for the past 200 years, the Danes have been pretty good, punching above their weight. There's Vilhelm Hammershøi, and the Skagen school. And before them, there was the Golden Age. We've just been to see to an absolutely stupendous, all-encompassing exhibition bringing together many of the masterpieces of The Danish Golden Age at the National Museum in Stockholm. It's possibly one of the best shows we've ever been to.... and we go to a lot.
Danish art's finest years lasted for a little over half a century, bookended by two traumatic events: the British naval bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807 aimed at stopping the Danes throwing their lot in with Napoleon, and the loss of Schleswig-Holstein following war with Germany in 1864. It was an era when painters expressed an increased feeling of national pride with romantic overtones while rendering the world around them with clarity and precision.
The greatest painter of this period was Christen Købke, and if there's one quintessential Golden Age picture, it's possibly this one: A View of Lake Sortedam from Dosseringen Looking towards the Suburb Nørrebro outside Copenhagen.
At first glance, there's not a lot to it. Two women with their backs to us stand on a small jetty on the shrub-lined shore of a lake as a rowing boat approaches. A Danish flag flutters in a very slight breeze against an early-evening sky that's a little bit cloudy. It's very understated, but the light and the atmosphere are wonderful. There may be a political message here too: At the time this picture was painted, in 1838, only the royal family and the navy were permitted to use the flag. Købke's insertion of it in this painting could be seen as an expression of sympathy for liberal movements that wanted to make the flag a symbol of national unity.
Købke did drama too: One of the most breathtaking viewpoints in art is surely the one from where One of the Small Towers on Frederiksborg Castle was painted. This is a big, a monumental canvas, and you look down from your bird's-eye view at a scene that includes a couple of storks and some tiny walkers on the paths that run behind the castle against the backdrop of a blue Scandinavian sky.
There must be around 20 works by Købke in this show, which contains more than 200 pictures in total, very many of them from Copenhagen's National Gallery. Indeed, it's a Købke that the very first painting you see as you enter: this portrait of his fellow landscape artist Frederic Sødring, armed with the tools of his trade, including his all-important folding chair tucked into the bottom right-hand corner.
Købke was not only a wonderful painter, he was a superb draughtsman, too. His Portrait of Professor Frederik Christian Sibbern is so tangible it makes you feel the professor is there in the room, staring intently at you.
The Danish Golden Age didn't begin with Købke. The first great painter of the period was C.W. Eckersberg. He studied in Paris under Jacques-Louis David, who stressed the importance of painting "truthfully and beautifully". He wrote home from the French capital in 1811 about suffering from an inferiority complex in the midst of so much great art. But Eckersberg proved to be a particularly skilled constructor of cityscapes, such as The Marble Steps leading up to the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome.
It was back in Denmark, though, where Eckersberg took up the vacant professorship at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1819, that he made his greatest contribution to Danish painting. There was a big emphasis on drawing from life, and in 1833 Eckersberg went so far as to introduce studies of the female nude.
Wilhelm Bendz's painting of The Life Class at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts gives a flavour of the more traditional nature of artistic training. The class is taking place in the evening in artificial light -- there's a servant on the ladder in the middle of the picture making adjustments -- to ensure consistent illumination of the model holding an heroic pose.
Bendz is very good at capturing artists in the studio: Here's the rather androgynous looking sculptor Christen Christensen at work with a beefy guardsman striking a pose, his red coat providing a splash of colour in the left foreground. A dog sits in a bucket chewing a piece of cloth.
Some of Eckersberg's paintings, of classical motifs, haven't stood the test of time quite as well as other images from the Golden Age. But he did have the ability to produce snapshots of everyday life that sometimes astonish. Here there's a full moon over Copenhagen, and something momentous has clearly just happened. People are running towards us over the bridge across the harbour, and looking to their left; you can see the woman in green by the railing pointing excitedly. It's the opening scene of a story, but we don't know what happens next.
Here's another view of Copenhagen harbour: rather quieter but full of symbolism. This is by Martinus Rørbye, and it's the view from the home of his parents as he was about to leave it. The plants in their different stages of growth and the view to the ships and the horizon are motifs for the artist's transition from youth to adulthood.
It was a rite of passage for Danish artists to travel to Italy, and Rørbye was no exception. The central section of this show is devoted to Italy, but it's fair to say that many of the paintings they made there are not among the most interesting in this exhibition (Denmark is much more picturesque than Italy in some ways, perhaps).
Constantin Hansen captured the spirit of the Danish artists in Rome in this picture in which they stand and sit smoking pipes listening to the architect Gottlieb Bindesboll -- that's him recumbent in the fez -- describing his recent visit to an even more exotic location, Constantinople.
By the 1840s the attractions of Italy had paled for Danish painters and they were increasingly finding motifs in their homeland. This is the main theme of the second half of this exhibition.
There are some monumental landscapes: Louis Gurlitt's The Cliffs of the Island of Møn is reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich's views of cliffs on the island of Rügen. But it's perhaps the less showy paintings, such as P.C. Skovgaard's Bleaching Linen in a Clearing, a picture in which we seem to be eavesdropping on a private conversation, that have the greater effect. This is mankind in harmony with nature.
The Golden Age was coming toward a close, and the end came with Denmark's traumatic defeat in the war over Schleswig-Holstein. Danish painters don't seem to have given us much in the way of scenes of battle, but A Wounded Danish Soldier, by Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann, who was actually of German descent, serves as an epitaph.
As the Golden Age waned, Danes were searching for a way back to the past. The country was industrialising and modernising. There was a sense that something had been lost. Frederik Vermehren painted A Jutland Shepherd on the Moors, and there's a concerned expression on the man's face as he looks up from his knitting. His simple, traditional way of life is fading away....
We spent more than three hours completely absorbed in this exhibition -- it's not just the magnificent artworks, it's also hugely informative and covers a lot of ground, broken up into more than 30 subject areas -- and we recommend it unreservedly. This Danish art isn't particularly well known, even in neighbouring Sweden, and deserves a wider audience. If you can't get to see the show in Stockholm, there are more opportunities to relive the Golden Age when it travels on to Copenhagen and Paris.
The exhibition moves to Copenhagen's National Gallery from August 24 to December 8 and then goes on in 2020 to the Petit Palais in Paris.
Christen Købke, One of the Small Towers on Frederiksborg Castle, 1834-35, Designmuseum Denmark, Copenhagen. Photo: Pernille Klemp
Christen Købke, Portrait of Landscape Painter Frederic Sødring, 1832, The Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen.
Wilhelm Bendz, The Life Class at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, 1826, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen.
Wilhelm Bendz, A Sculptor (Christen Christensen) in his Studio Working from the Life, 1827, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
C.W. Eckersberg, Langebro, Copenhagen, in the Moonlight with Running Figures, 1836, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
Martinus Rørbye, View from the Artist’s Window, 1825, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen.
Constantin Hansen, A Group of Danish Artists in Rome, 1837, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann, A Wounded Danish Soldier, 1865. Oil on canvas, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
Frederik Vermehren, A Jutland Shepherd on the Moors, 1855, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
But we're thinking about painting. Because for the past 200 years, the Danes have been pretty good, punching above their weight. There's Vilhelm Hammershøi, and the Skagen school. And before them, there was the Golden Age. We've just been to see to an absolutely stupendous, all-encompassing exhibition bringing together many of the masterpieces of The Danish Golden Age at the National Museum in Stockholm. It's possibly one of the best shows we've ever been to.... and we go to a lot.
Danish art's finest years lasted for a little over half a century, bookended by two traumatic events: the British naval bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807 aimed at stopping the Danes throwing their lot in with Napoleon, and the loss of Schleswig-Holstein following war with Germany in 1864. It was an era when painters expressed an increased feeling of national pride with romantic overtones while rendering the world around them with clarity and precision.
The greatest painter of this period was Christen Købke, and if there's one quintessential Golden Age picture, it's possibly this one: A View of Lake Sortedam from Dosseringen Looking towards the Suburb Nørrebro outside Copenhagen.
Købke did drama too: One of the most breathtaking viewpoints in art is surely the one from where One of the Small Towers on Frederiksborg Castle was painted. This is a big, a monumental canvas, and you look down from your bird's-eye view at a scene that includes a couple of storks and some tiny walkers on the paths that run behind the castle against the backdrop of a blue Scandinavian sky.
The Danish Golden Age didn't begin with Købke. The first great painter of the period was C.W. Eckersberg. He studied in Paris under Jacques-Louis David, who stressed the importance of painting "truthfully and beautifully". He wrote home from the French capital in 1811 about suffering from an inferiority complex in the midst of so much great art. But Eckersberg proved to be a particularly skilled constructor of cityscapes, such as The Marble Steps leading up to the Church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in Rome.
It was back in Denmark, though, where Eckersberg took up the vacant professorship at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1819, that he made his greatest contribution to Danish painting. There was a big emphasis on drawing from life, and in 1833 Eckersberg went so far as to introduce studies of the female nude.
Constantin Hansen captured the spirit of the Danish artists in Rome in this picture in which they stand and sit smoking pipes listening to the architect Gottlieb Bindesboll -- that's him recumbent in the fez -- describing his recent visit to an even more exotic location, Constantinople.
There are some monumental landscapes: Louis Gurlitt's The Cliffs of the Island of Møn is reminiscent of Caspar David Friedrich's views of cliffs on the island of Rügen. But it's perhaps the less showy paintings, such as P.C. Skovgaard's Bleaching Linen in a Clearing, a picture in which we seem to be eavesdropping on a private conversation, that have the greater effect. This is mankind in harmony with nature.
The Golden Age was coming toward a close, and the end came with Denmark's traumatic defeat in the war over Schleswig-Holstein. Danish painters don't seem to have given us much in the way of scenes of battle, but A Wounded Danish Soldier, by Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann, who was actually of German descent, serves as an epitaph.
Practicalities
The Danish Golden Age is on at the National Museum in Stockholm until July 21. No need to get up early; it's open from 1100 to 1900 Tuesday to Sunday, with lates on Thursday to 2100. Full-price admission is 150 kronor, which at just over £12 is a steal compared with London exhibition prices. You can book tickets online here.The exhibition moves to Copenhagen's National Gallery from August 24 to December 8 and then goes on in 2020 to the Petit Palais in Paris.
While you're in Stockholm's National Museum
Admission to the permanent collection is free of charge, unusually in continental Europe. The recently restored museum has a fine group of Rembrandts as its highlight.Images
Christen Købke, A View of Lake Sortedam from Dosseringen Looking towards the Suburb Nørrebro outside Copenhagen, 1838, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, CopenhagenChristen Købke, One of the Small Towers on Frederiksborg Castle, 1834-35, Designmuseum Denmark, Copenhagen. Photo: Pernille Klemp
Christen Købke, Portrait of Landscape Painter Frederic Sødring, 1832, The Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen.
Wilhelm Bendz, The Life Class at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, 1826, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen.
Wilhelm Bendz, A Sculptor (Christen Christensen) in his Studio Working from the Life, 1827, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
C.W. Eckersberg, Langebro, Copenhagen, in the Moonlight with Running Figures, 1836, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
Martinus Rørbye, View from the Artist’s Window, 1825, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen.
Constantin Hansen, A Group of Danish Artists in Rome, 1837, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann, A Wounded Danish Soldier, 1865. Oil on canvas, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
Frederik Vermehren, A Jutland Shepherd on the Moors, 1855, SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
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