En dansk kyst. Motiv fra Kitnæs ved Roskilde Fjord

Lundbye painted this prospect after deciding, in 1842, to treat a Danish coast in a format unusually monumental for its day, so that the motif could stand beside the alpine landscapes admired from abroad. The result is not a record of one place but a deliberate summary of what he and his mentor N.L. Høyen took to be the defining feature of the country: its long coastline. The cliffs he had drawn at Roskilde Fjord near Kitnæs were enlarged and recombined with other material, and the work went slowly, through the hesitations and second thoughts that marked his practice; the museum’s own account records a private autobiographical comment he left in the middle of the canvas. Lundbye died in the First Schleswig War in 1848, aged twenty-nine, and this picture remains the fullest statement of the national Romantic idea of the Danish landscape. The painting is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).