Jyske bønder på vej hjem fra marked med deres heste

The museum keeps the title in two languages — Jyske bønder på vej hjem fra marked med deres heste in Danish and Jutlandic Peasants Bound for Home along with their Horses in English — and the work is inscribed I.SONNE 1870. It was acquired in 1870, the year it was painted, and the museum lent it to Awakening of Nations at the Vytautas Kasiulis Art Museum in Vilnius in 2021. Jørgen Valentin Sonne appears at first to have intended a military career, though the museum notes that the tradition of his having trained for a time at the Land Cadet Academy cannot be confirmed. After two semesters at the Academy’s building school he was admitted to its first freehand drawing class in 1815, where he formed lasting friendships with Troels Lund and Albert Küchler and, with H.W. Bissen and Harro Harring, practised drawing from life out of doors. A pupil of the animal and battle painter C.D. Gebauer, he exhibited animal pieces and copies after Dutch masters from 1818, and after 1820 he was increasingly taken up with battle painting, attracting notice for his inventive battle pieces despite their often somewhat awkward handling. Further training in the field could only be had abroad, and he sought support to study battle painting at the academy in Munich and under Horace Vernet in Paris. The museum also records, in its account of Christen Dalsgaard, that when N.L. Høyen in 1844 urged Danish painters to turn to the life of the common people, it was Sonne who was the first to answer. The painting is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).