Golden Age drawings for the Royal Collection of Graphic Art

The collection, which SMK acquired in a private sale at the auction house Christie’s in London, consists of nine drawings by C. W. Eckersberg, eight drawings and a sketchbook by Christen Købke and a total of three drawings by Wilhelm Marstrand, J. Th. Lundbye and Vilhelm Pedersen; the latter a rare portrait of Søren Kierkegaard.

Eckersberg’s nudes

Not least Eckersberg’s drawings offer new perspectives on the artist’s oeuvre. His Studie af en siddende, halvnøgen kvinde (Study of a seated female semi-nude) shows a woman lost in thought. Only her lower torso and her thighs are covered by a piece of cloth. Her gaze is dreamily turned away from the artist. In his depiction of his models, Eckersberg sought to create works of art that were outside time and space, and by having the woman turn her gaze away, he achieves a less staged feel.

Eckersberg’s use of cloth in his nudes aims more to highlight the nudity than to conceal it. By placing the viewer in a voyeuristic position, the study takes on a slightly different quality than the other female nudes by Eckersberg in the Royal Collection of Graphic Art. In these other pictures, the woman looks at the viewer, thus acknowledging both the viewer’s and the artist’s presence.

Although Eckersberg worked with nudes throughout his career, there were no official showings of his painted nudes during his lifetime. It is only thanks to recent research that this aspect of his practice has now taken on prominence in our understanding of his total body of work.

Golden Age art and SMK

Over the past ten years, growing interest in 19th-century Danish art has resulted in a several international exhibitions. The most recent was The Golden Age of Danish Painting (1801–1864), an exhibition that travelled from SMK to Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and is set to continue on to Petit Palais in Paris this autumn.

Art from the Golden Age makes up a big share of SMK’s collection, as it has since the mid 19th century. The period has played a prominent role in the presentation of Danish visual art at the gallery and occupies a central place in Danish cultural heritage.

Art on paper

The Royal Collection of Graphic Art, Denmark’s special collection of art on paper, at SMK is a unique collection of Golden Age drawings, which is continuously expanded. New acquisitions aim both to ensure a broad and nuanced representation of the central artists of the era and to secure pieces that relate strongly to the gallery’s existing collection. The newly acquired collection represents an important part of Denmark’s cultural heritage and adds new perspectives to Golden Age visual art and culture through drawings that are significant for the period.