KØBKE, Christen

Købke is one of the most distinguished of the so-called painters of the Danish Golden Age, whose work represents a brilliant contribution to nineteenth- century European art. He started training as an artist at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen in 1822, and from 1828 became a student of C.W. Eckersberg. Købke usually painted small-scale pictures of great precision - landscapes, studies of architectural subjects and portraits of his family and friends. Whatever the subject, he invariably combined carefully observed, often richly coloured naturalistic details, with a sense of controlled abstract design.

This painting was made in about 1830, when he was developing his mature style, and shows the bakery in the Kastel, which is a castle in Copenhagen that served as a prison. The three figures in the foreground are Købke’s father, who owned the bakery, Major J.J. Krohn, and the slave Sergeant Sporch (the prisoners were described as ‘slaves’). The scene was one with which Købke was very familiar as he lived within the castle compound from 1817 to 1834. In the later 1830s his family moved out of Copenhagen and he concentrated on depicting more rural scenes; subsequent visits to Germany and Italy broadened the scope of his subject matter still further.

This astonishing portrait of the artist’s sister is one of the Danish master’s finest works, summing up his qualities as a colourist and his expert rendering of light. Particularly touching, this highly realistic picture can be considered one of the finest children portraits of the nineteenth century in Europe.

A plant is a significant presence in the portrait that the leading Danish painter of the age, Christen Købke, painted of his friend Frederik Sødring (1809-62) on his birthday in 1832. The smiling, ruddy cheeked landscape painter is seated palette in hand. The vigorous ivy in a pot behind him has a multiple purpose, standing for the friendship that binds artist and sitter, and the creativity that enables him to mediate between nature and the ideal - represented respectively by the pictures of a cow and of Roman ruins pinned to the wall. Once again, while adopting the organic image of creativity common to Romanticism, Købke’s picture presents a wholesome, outgoing impression of the artist’s life.

During his day, Købke was known as a straightforward, good-natured and simple-minded person who did not strive to attract attention to himself. His self-portrait supports this description. Only the insistent gaze suggests that the picture shows one of the greatest Danish artists of all time.

The artist’s father died in 1843, and after a few years it turned out that the family had to move out of their home on Blegdammen, which at the time lay outside of Copenhagen. This prompted a desire to capture the scenes that had been part of his everyday life since the family moved there in 1833.

Købke spent most of his childhood at the Citadel in Copenhagen where his father was a baker. In 1832 he rented a studio on Toldbodvej (now Esplanaden), which offered him a new view on his childhood home. From the studio window he could look over the neighbour opposite to the Citadel.

Above the treetops he could see the Citadel mill, the ridge turret of the Citadel Church, the red rooftops of the military buildings, and the Oresund coastline in the far distance. In order to create depth in the small picture he added the edge of the neighbouring house’s roof and a chimney in the foreground. The chimney in particular is quite a stroke of genius, testifying to artistic boldness. It is unlikely that any other Danish painter working at the time would have let something as unimportant as a chimney occupy such a central position in a picture.

Købke’s journey abroad in 1839 seems to have been the decisive influence on him. During this trip, he came into contact with German Romanticism in Dresden and with the landscape tradition of Rome, his principal destination. When he returned to Copenhagen, he made a series of remarkable studies of the city - particularly the areas around the Frederiksborg Castle - that display both a fidelity to observation and a delight in depicting people and places from striking and revealing viewpoints. His View of One of the Lakes in Copenhagen is the best known of these works.

The painting shows two figures on the edge of a jetty watching a departing boat. The whole mood of the picture - the Spartan design of the jetty and the tender melancholy of the evening sun - suggest sadness at separation. Yet nothing has been forced. It is a meaning discovered in, rather than imposed upon, a scene.

In 1833 Købke moved with his parents to Blegdammen by the Sortedam Lake, then located outside of Copenhagen proper. In the years that followed he found many of his motifs by the lake. Købke also found the scene shown in this picture close to his home, at the end of the lake. It shows Østerbrogade, the principal shopping street and thoroughfare in Østerbro, still rural back in those days, edged by distinguished farm buildings.