Udsigt fra Dosseringen ved Sortedamssøen mod Nørrebro

Most of Købke’s surviving work is small and private, which makes this canvas one of the comparatively few large and fully resolved compositions he carried through — he built it from an oil study of the same prospect and from drawings in which he tightened the whole structure. It belongs to the years when the national Romantic revival gave Danish landscape painting a claim to be the country’s true history painting, and to the circle around the art historian N.L. Høyen, who argued that the Danish countryside carried the memory and character of the nation. The Royal Collection bought the picture from Købke in 1839 and hung it in the picture gallery at Christiansborg; in 1841 it was moved into the king’s private apartments, where it remained until 1864, when it was withdrawn from the auction held after Frederik VII’s death and handed instead to the Royal Picture Collection that December. The painting is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).