A Danish Coast

The painting shows a view from Kitnas on Roskilde Fjord, Zeeland. When the painter decided to depict a Danish coastline in an unusually monumental format, the scene was to represent the quintessential characteristic of the Danish countryside: the extensive coastlines. The scene does not, in fact, depict a single, specific site, the main motif is based on cliffs that the artist saw and sketched at the Roskilde Fjord. He adapted these cliffs, making them rather more monumental, and combined them with scenes from elsewhere.