Motiv fra Capri, kort efter solens opgang

The museum keeps only the Danish title — Motiv fra Capri, kort efter solens opgang, “Motif from Capri, shortly after sunrise” — and dates the canvas 1841–1843. It measures 157 × 232 cm and is painted in oil on canvas; the museum holds it in the Royal Collection of Paintings and Sculpture. Those are the years of Købke’s stay of several months on Capri, which the gallery’s own account of him singles out as the recovery of the painter’s old joy in painting: he worked with predilection at the island’s two harbours, Marina Grande and Marina Piccola, and the museum describes the body of drawings, sketches and larger studies the campaign produced as partly underrated. The Academy reception piece that came out of the same journey, Parti af Marina Piccola på Capri, was not delivered until 1846, and was rejected when it was.

Christen Købke (1810–1848) began to draw as a boy of eleven, and trained at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under the ageing C.A. Lorentzen before working his way out from under that teacher towards C.W. Eckersberg’s direct observation and lighter colour. The Copenhagen views and portrait groups he made in the 1830s brought him recognition in his own lifetime, but most of his paintings stayed with his family, and his reputation had to be recovered after his death in February 1848 — helped by an exhibition at the Kunstforeningen in 1884 and by Emil Hannover’s biography of 1893. The museum today calls him perhaps the finest painterly talent the country has produced. It is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).