Lot 247: Christen Købke , Danish 1810-1848 En Fiskerdreng fra Capri (A Capri Fisherman) oil on board

signed and inscribed Kõbke. / Capri lower right oil on board

30 by 24.5cm., 12¼ by 9¾in.

Mario Krohn, Maleren Christen Koebkes Arbejder, Copenhagen, 1915, no. 177
Hans Edvard Noerregaard-Nielsen, Christen Koebke, Italien tur-retur, vol. 3, Copenhagen, 1996, p. 182, catalogued, discussed & illustrated
Hans Edvard Noerregaard-Nielsen & Kasper Monrad, eds., Christen Koebke. 1810-1848, Copenhagen, 1996, no. 177

Sale: Bruun Rasmussen, 4 November 1981, lot 431
Purchased by the present owner at the above sale

We are grateful to Kasper Monrad, Chief Curator of the Statens Museum for Kunst, for his assistance in cataloguing this work.
PROPERTY OF A DANISH PRIVATE COLLECTOR
The Danish Golden Age TO PRECEDE LOT 247 As the art historian Henrik Bramsen has pointed out, the term 'Golden Age' as used to describe academic Danish art of the first half of the nineteenth century came into general circulation as late as 1890, forming the title of a book about Danish poetry of the first half of the nineteenth century. In the book, its author, Valdemar Vedel, claims that only after 1800 did the Danish mind gain its true, poetic expression. It was a romantic and patriotic notion, and the 'golden' label soon came to be transferred to the classicising pictorial art of the first half of the nineteenth century, which was similarly assumed to express the national soul with particular purity. Christoffer Wilhlem Eckersberg, who in 1816 returned from Rome with a new and confident style, is now seen as the father of Danish Golden Age painting, the more so because of his close association with Denmark's other great role model, the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1768-1844), who had introduced him to classical antiquity during his stay in Italy. Paradoxically, Denmark's 'golden age' was far from bright and harmonious in reality. The country had been at war, the union between Norway and Denmark lay shattered, and the economy was in shambles. The rich grew poor and the poor even poorer, and a growing tension between the Danish and German segments of the community finally led to the bloody civil war of 1848-50. It is perhaps not surprising that so much Golden Age painting is so removed from the reality in which it was created. Rather than a celebration of Denmark's pride and strength, as Vedel would have it writing at the end of the nineteenth century, the period's refined still lifes, peaceful cloisters, timeless Italianate views and historicising scenes perhaps represent a withdrawal by artists from the turbulence of the times. NOTE FOR LOT 247 Today Christen Koebke is considered the most outstanding Danish painter of the Golden Age. He had a good deal of his teacher Eckersberg's severity, but was guided more by intuition than by strict principle, and had a more lively perception of his subjects. In 1838 Koebke went to Italy but not in order to repeat the Roman views of his teacher, but to paint nature in Naples and Capri, and to copy the antique murals in Pompeii. The present work is one of the rare portraits inspired by the journey.