Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Danish Art

In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark fell into a state of economic and social turmoil. This exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (26 January–16 April 2023) brings together more than 100 oil sketches, paintings and drawings to consider how the period of hardship also brought about a thriving artistic culture and community. Highlights include Martinus Rørbye’s melancholic View from the Citadel Romparts in Copenhagen by Moonlight (1839) and Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg’s large-scale Panorama of the Copenhagen Roads (1828–39). The final section of the exhibition looks at the lives and work of Danish artists abroad, as depicted in Constantin Hansen’s A Group of Danish Artists in Rome (1837). Find out more on the Met’s website.

Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary

Anchors in a Copenhagen Square (1838), Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. Image: © SMK Photo/Jakob Skou-Hansen

View from the Citadel Ramparts in Copenhagen by Moonlight (1839), Martinus Rørbye. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

One of the Small Towers on Frederiksborg Castle (c. 1831), Christen Købke. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. Image: © SMK Photo/Jakob Skou-Hansen