A Young Artist Examining a Sketch in a Mirror

Wilhelm Bendz was keenly interested in the new role emerging for artists in the early 19th century; they were no longer regarded as specialist craftsmen, but as intellectual workers, as artists in the modern sense. In the 1820s, he painted a number of pictures of artists at work. The artist in this picture is Bendz’s fellow student Ditlev Blunck (1799-1853) engaged in painting a portrait of Jorgen Sonne, a painter of battle scenes.