View from the Battery towards the City
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg1836
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Cleveland, United States
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg is known for initiating Danish painting’s Golden Age—a period of cultural efflorescence during the first half of the 19th century. Marine subjects were among the artist’s favorite, and the primary focus of his work beginning in the 1820s. Dating from this period, this drawing depicts Russian ships viewed from a fortress in Copenhagen’s harbor. In his journal, Eckersberg described making the trip to see the fleet with friends and waiting for the waters to become calm enough for sailing. To convey this experience, he juxtaposed precise perspective of the landscape with expressively rendered clouds.
- Title: View from the Battery towards the City
- Creator: Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg (Danish, 1783-1853)
- Date Created: 1836
- Physical Dimensions: Sheet: 18.5 x 31.5 cm (7 5/16 x 12 3/8 in.)
- Provenance: Estate of the artist [1785-1853], Copenhagen, Denmark, (his sale, Copenhagen, January 1854, no. 375), Private collection, Denmark, (sale, Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, November 24, 2015, no. 61), (Le Claire Kunst, Hamburg, Germany, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art), Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
- Type: Drawing
- Rights: CC0
- External Link: https://clevelandart.org/art/2020.225
- Medium: graphite, pen and black and gray ink, and brush and gray wash on wove paper
- Inscriptions: signed and dated, at lower right: Eckersberg fec. 1836; inscribed on verso: Eckersberg 7 Sept. 1836; perspective indications in graphite across lower border at 4 cm intervals; vertical line through center
- Fun Fact: Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg depicted the view seen in this work, of Copenhagen from the small island of Trekroner, in several other works including a painting in Denmark’s Hirschsprung Collection.
- Department: Drawings
- Culture: Denmark, 19th century
- Credit Line: Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
- Collection: DR - Misc. Countries
- Accession Number: 2020.225
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