A View of Lake Sortedam from Dosseringen Looking towards the Suburb Nørrebro outside Copenhagen

About this work

The painting was created at a time when national sentiments grew greatly in strength and scope. Indeed, the work cultivates the atmospheric and the romantic, while the flag accentuates the fact that we are looking at a Danish suburban landscape. On a quiet summer night two young women stand on a bridge looking at a rowing boat slowly moving away on the lake. There is no defined narrative staged here, but nevertheless a story is told. It is a story without words or action; an atmospheric moment striking up a theme of departure and separation. The prosaic fact that the party could not have travelled very far away on the tiny lake has no impact on the message conveyed by the image. Despite its relatively modest format, the painting is numbered among Købke’s large, carefully finished compositions. The painting is based on a small oil study of the same view as well as on several drawings; the artist has made several significant adjustments to the motif along the way. Købke leaned on his preliminary studies, but he tightened up the composition and all its lines, ranging from the lakeshore to the flagpole. Here, an otherwise unprepossessing suburban scene becomes stately and…