Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg (1783-1853) stands among the most important artists of Danish art history. While working in Rome around 1815, he created the basis for an entire epoch in Danish art: the so-called Golden Age. Eckersberg’s art combines dual traits: great precision in the depiction of every detail as well as a desire to show his subjects to their best advantage. He disregarded the accidental and the ugly. And he would often adjust and “improve” his subjects. 

Eckersberg paved the way for modern painting. Without the understated transition away from classical history painting to studies of nature’s essential forms effected by him and other artists such as J.A.D. Ingres, later artists like Paul Cézanne or Edvard Weie would not have had the same starting point for their work with the picture plane, nor for their poetic liberation of colour itself. In his own day, Eckersberg struck a highly successful balance between fundamental respect for the actual visual appearance of the physical world and a keen sense for the formal architecture of paintings.  

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg offers insight into the artist’s life and career while also considering his work within the framework of the international art scene of his day. Instead of providing a conventionally slavish chronological account of his life, the book sheds new light on his art by exploring five central themes: views of nature, portraying people, the human body, storytelling and image construction. Written by a range of leading experts on Eckersberg’s art, this book is published to coincide with the SMK exhibition Eckersberg - A Beautiful Lie.