CRISTEN KOBKE, DANISH MASTER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON
CHRISTEN KOBKE, DANISH MASTER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON, MARCH 2010
This exhibition trumpets Christen Kobke (1810-1848) as the greatest master of the Danish Golden Age, which more or less means Danish history from the defeat at the hands of Lord Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen (1801) to Denmark's defeat by Prussia in the Second Schleswig War of 1864. At this time the states of Schleswig and Holstein were lost and incorporated into the new German Reich under the leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Christen Kobke's life was lived against this backdrop of militarism and militarisation. Denmark was ruined financially by the Napoleonic Wars and Kobke lived during the period of economic reconstruction that followed. This period was ended by the succeeding wars against Prussia. By 1864 Denmark had virtually ceased to be an independent country, becoming instead a satellite of a Greater Germany.
Christen Kobke's father was master baker in The Citadel, a military barracks, home to 600 soldiers and their families, on the edge of Copenhagen. The Danish author Hans Christian Anderson depicted The Citadel as a dangerous, unsavoury, insanitary place. Both Hans Christian Anderson and the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard came to prominence in this period, as did Christen Kobke. Most of Kobke's early, non-academic paintings are of The Citadel, of the red painted bridge that straddled the moat at its entrance, of the many itinerant or semi-itinerant tradesmen, such as a portrait of a cigar seller, who made their living by serving the local community. Kobke's paintings are always personal, intimate, reflecting on a life lived among a tightly knit community during a period of relative crisis. His early portraits are of his family, for though he was well known to possess excellent painterly skills he surprisingly received relatively few commissions. He was thus unable, rather than unwilling, to travel. Kobke's emphasis is on the conservative, restricted, bourgeois life of his sitters and the landscapes reflecting the tranquility of the area surrounding The Citadel, underlining Kobke's fascination with light and the effects made by light. Kobke's plein air painting and his necessary tools: his art box (Kobke fastened paper onto the roof of the box so he could work out doors), his portable stool (which is depicted in his portrait of the landscape artist Frederick Sodring, with whom he shared an artist's garret near, but not within, The Citadel). Another famous, well-received portrait is of his mentor, the German sculptor Hermann Ernst Freund. Freund is depicted among the Pompeian decor of his home pondering a statue of Odin. Kopke is considering the Nordic influences of his art, but his chief influence is not Nordic but neo-classical and romantic.
The influence of the German Romantic artist Casper David Frederich is apparant upon Kobke's art, but Kobke lacked the manic visionary quality of much of Frederich's work, such as his Monk by the Sea (1809), The Abbey in the Oakwood (1809-10) and The Wanderer above the Mists (1817-18), all quintessential Romantic, visionary artworks, where the individual is poised against the backdrop of an elemental natural vista. Kobke's most important portrait is his depiction of the landscape artist Frederick Sodring. Sodring looks chipper. Behind him are his studies in Classicism and Nature, the two arms of Kopke's art. At art school in Copenhagen Kobke began working on male nudes. This helped the artist with his study of human anatomy. The paintings evolved from the male stronghold of the art academy and seem homo-erotic in impulse. Kobke married his cousin Susanne Cecilie Kobke in 1837 and they had two children. Kobke's social horizons were so limited that the marriage must have been virtually arranged. Most of his personal relations were with his family and his artist friends.
In 1833 the Kobke family moved out of The Citadel to a better part of the city, Blegdammen on Lake Sortedam, on the edge of Copenhagen. In 1835 Kobke painted his magnum opus study of Fredericksborg Castle, the grandest Renaissance palace in Scandanavia, a building that had attracted the attention of many artists before Kobke. His work Fredericksborg Castle in the Evening Light (1835) is a very conventional painting indeed, using a conventional composition of the site, but he made other, more radical compositions that cut away most of the building in order to concentrate on the landscape beyond. Kobke understood that he must complete the painting that would please the Royal Danish Academy and thus persuade them to allow him to become a member, that would persuade them to give him the money he needed to continue his work. His other paintings of Fredericksborg Castle disavow the conventional so abruptly as to be almost a rejection of it, as if the artist is telling the Academy where to go. But he never did, instead dying in 1848, the year of 'The Spring of Peoples' at the early age of just 38. His father died in 1843, clearly Kobke was unable to survive without his firm hand. He made one visit to Italy a few years before his death. His views of Naples are refreshing, bold, free exercises, entirely different from his images of constricted bourgeois complacency, engaging uses of light, yellow or purple sunsets and his landscapes. Kobke is an artist engaging with convention, seemingly divided by the pressures of conformity that bore down upon him, that finally overwhelmed both his life and art. This is an intimate exhibition that uses space well to suggest the vistas of Kobke's art. It is excellently documented and researched.
Paul Murphy, National Gallery, London
This exhibition trumpets Christen Kobke (1810-1848) as the greatest master of the Danish Golden Age, which more or less means Danish history from the defeat at the hands of Lord Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen (1801) to Denmark's defeat by Prussia in the Second Schleswig War of 1864. At this time the states of Schleswig and Holstein were lost and incorporated into the new German Reich under the leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Christen Kobke's life was lived against this backdrop of militarism and militarisation. Denmark was ruined financially by the Napoleonic Wars and Kobke lived during the period of economic reconstruction that followed. This period was ended by the succeeding wars against Prussia. By 1864 Denmark had virtually ceased to be an independent country, becoming instead a satellite of a Greater Germany.
Christen Kobke's father was master baker in The Citadel, a military barracks, home to 600 soldiers and their families, on the edge of Copenhagen. The Danish author Hans Christian Anderson depicted The Citadel as a dangerous, unsavoury, insanitary place. Both Hans Christian Anderson and the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard came to prominence in this period, as did Christen Kobke. Most of Kobke's early, non-academic paintings are of The Citadel, of the red painted bridge that straddled the moat at its entrance, of the many itinerant or semi-itinerant tradesmen, such as a portrait of a cigar seller, who made their living by serving the local community. Kobke's paintings are always personal, intimate, reflecting on a life lived among a tightly knit community during a period of relative crisis. His early portraits are of his family, for though he was well known to possess excellent painterly skills he surprisingly received relatively few commissions. He was thus unable, rather than unwilling, to travel. Kobke's emphasis is on the conservative, restricted, bourgeois life of his sitters and the landscapes reflecting the tranquility of the area surrounding The Citadel, underlining Kobke's fascination with light and the effects made by light. Kobke's plein air painting and his necessary tools: his art box (Kobke fastened paper onto the roof of the box so he could work out doors), his portable stool (which is depicted in his portrait of the landscape artist Frederick Sodring, with whom he shared an artist's garret near, but not within, The Citadel). Another famous, well-received portrait is of his mentor, the German sculptor Hermann Ernst Freund. Freund is depicted among the Pompeian decor of his home pondering a statue of Odin. Kopke is considering the Nordic influences of his art, but his chief influence is not Nordic but neo-classical and romantic.
The influence of the German Romantic artist Casper David Frederich is apparant upon Kobke's art, but Kobke lacked the manic visionary quality of much of Frederich's work, such as his Monk by the Sea (1809), The Abbey in the Oakwood (1809-10) and The Wanderer above the Mists (1817-18), all quintessential Romantic, visionary artworks, where the individual is poised against the backdrop of an elemental natural vista. Kobke's most important portrait is his depiction of the landscape artist Frederick Sodring. Sodring looks chipper. Behind him are his studies in Classicism and Nature, the two arms of Kopke's art. At art school in Copenhagen Kobke began working on male nudes. This helped the artist with his study of human anatomy. The paintings evolved from the male stronghold of the art academy and seem homo-erotic in impulse. Kobke married his cousin Susanne Cecilie Kobke in 1837 and they had two children. Kobke's social horizons were so limited that the marriage must have been virtually arranged. Most of his personal relations were with his family and his artist friends.
In 1833 the Kobke family moved out of The Citadel to a better part of the city, Blegdammen on Lake Sortedam, on the edge of Copenhagen. In 1835 Kobke painted his magnum opus study of Fredericksborg Castle, the grandest Renaissance palace in Scandanavia, a building that had attracted the attention of many artists before Kobke. His work Fredericksborg Castle in the Evening Light (1835) is a very conventional painting indeed, using a conventional composition of the site, but he made other, more radical compositions that cut away most of the building in order to concentrate on the landscape beyond. Kobke understood that he must complete the painting that would please the Royal Danish Academy and thus persuade them to allow him to become a member, that would persuade them to give him the money he needed to continue his work. His other paintings of Fredericksborg Castle disavow the conventional so abruptly as to be almost a rejection of it, as if the artist is telling the Academy where to go. But he never did, instead dying in 1848, the year of 'The Spring of Peoples' at the early age of just 38. His father died in 1843, clearly Kobke was unable to survive without his firm hand. He made one visit to Italy a few years before his death. His views of Naples are refreshing, bold, free exercises, entirely different from his images of constricted bourgeois complacency, engaging uses of light, yellow or purple sunsets and his landscapes. Kobke is an artist engaging with convention, seemingly divided by the pressures of conformity that bore down upon him, that finally overwhelmed both his life and art. This is an intimate exhibition that uses space well to suggest the vistas of Kobke's art. It is excellently documented and researched.
Paul Murphy, National Gallery, London
Comments