P.C. Skovgaard

View from Frederiksborg Castle

P.C. Skovgaard’s View from Frederiksborg Castle was originally painted as part of a decoration project that he and J. Th. Lundbye carried out in 1842 in a room in a Copenhagen apartment that belonged to Skovgaard’s uncle Kristian Aggersborg. The decoration mainly consisted of three almost equally large wall sections and had the character of programme art: all three pictures showed a famous historic building in Denmark against a background of typical Danish landscapes. The now divided room decoration was a tribute to Danishness, a National Romantic room installation, and as such a neglected masterpiece of Danish Golden Age art.

Skovgaard does not show a prestigious view of the castle, for example by having a prominent facade fill out most of the picture surface. Instead he looks away from the building – but does show enough so we know where we are – and lets our gaze glide over the landscape. The movement of the gaze through the picture from viewpoint to horizon, from castle to forest – embodied by the only actors in the painting, the two walkers on their way into the forest in the background – describes the frictionless merging of Danish history and Danish nature that formed the core of the Golden Age worldview.