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The Prison of Copenhagen
Martinus Rørbye (Danish, 1803–1848)
1831
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- height 47.5 cm, width 63 cm, height 62 cm, width 78.2 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
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the SMK – National Gallery of Denmark
About this work
Rørbye’s moralising depiction of street life in Copenhagen strikes an improving note with its architectural frame alone. With its forbidding aspect, C.F. Hansen’s prison struck fear of the cost of any crime into citizens. In the background a young man is asking an older moneylender for a loan, while another points tellingly to the debtor’s prison behind him. The young dandy in the middle gazes lustily at the young mother to the right. Depictions of life within the town walls were popular at the time. Typical characteristics of the genre included a plethora of types familiar from everyday life and moralising narratives rather than documentary accounts. Such art allowed the affluent to confirm their own moral superiority in images ensconced between family portraits, safely secluded from actual events.
