Christen Købke

Christen Schiellerup Købke (26 May 1810 – 7 February 1848) was a Danish painter and one of the best known artists from the Golden Age of Danish Painting. Købke, a national romantic, painted portraits, landscapes and architectural paintings. Most of Købke’s portraits show friends, family members and fellow artists. He found most of his motifs in his immediate surroundings. Now he is recognized internationally for his well composed and harmonic paintings, for their coloristic qualities and for his sense of the everyday life. But in his lifetime he was almost forgotten, especially because of his early death and limited production. Despite his talent and the praise of various contemporaries, Købke had never been inundated with commissions.

Købke is recognized today as one of the most talented among Denmark’s Golden Age painters and the most internationally renowned Danish painter of his generation. The painterly interpretations he made of his surroundings stand as high points of the period.