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A Little Boy being Presented to a Priest
Ernst Meyer (Danish, 1797–1861)
1846
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- height 29 cm, width 22 cm
- Culture
- Danish
- Museum
- SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
- Rights
- Public Domain Mark: SMK waives its rights in this photograph, as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
About this work
As a student at the art academy in Copenhagen, Ernst Meyer attracted attention for his rebellious attitude towards the teaching provided. The academy’s later secretary, Just Mathias Thiele, described him in these terms: ‘– a rebellious Israelite who had shown the professors back home the door and set out for Munich to seek his education there.’ In Munich, Meyer pursued his ambition to illustrate Goethe’s works and was generally very interested in German Romanticism. When he left Munich in 1824 and set out for Rome with the sculptor Herman Wilhelm Bissen, he stayed in touch with the German artists. He established himself as a genre painter specialising in Italian folk scenes, as did several German painters during those years. In Rome, Meyer became a central figure in the Danish artist colony around Thorvaldsen, and his scenes were in demand among a large and wide clientele who sympathised with his anecdotal depictions of everyday events, large and small. Thorvaldsen and the Danish king Christian VIII bought several of his paintings, and reproductions of his works were made in large numbers. He was also popular with critics, who praised him for his ability to reproduce…
