Material Oil on canvas
Dimensions 127 x 189 cm
Place of Creation Denmark
Status Vetted

About the Work

The Danish art historian Vagn Poulsen once described the Artist Peter Christian Skovgaard as "...the most gifted painter of the period after 1850..." in Danish art history. The middle of the 19th century is the period referred to as the Golden Age of Danish Painting, of which Skovgaard was a leading representative.


Although Skovgaard also excelled at detailed studies of nature, he produced a number of panoramas of the Danish countryside, which were much in tune with the revival of Danish nationalism and national identity throughout the nineteenth century.


Our painting is a rare example of this. It shows a placid summer afternoon, with the so-called "Himmelbjaerget" (or celestial mountain) seen across lake Jul, near the town of Silkeborg in eastern Denmark. Skovgaard has combined all his artistic intricacy to convey the summer sunshine bathing the scene in natural light. It is an ode to the heavenly mountain, which, rising to 147 metres, is Denmark's tallest point and became a focal point of patriotic attention that endures to this day.

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Provenance

Copenhagen, Charlottenborg, 1869, no 197;
Copenhagen, Kunstforeningen, 1917, no. 349;
Sotheby's London, auction 2 April 1998, lot nr 5;
Private collection, England

Literature

Gertrud Oelsner and Karina Lykke Grand: "P.C. Skovgaard. Dansk guldalder revurderet", Aarhus 2010, p. 185 (Fig. 57).

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