Cleveland Museum of Art

View from the Battery toward the City

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg

Date

1836

Medium

graphite, pen and black and gray ink, and brush and gray wash on wove paper

Culture

Denmark

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg is known for initiating Danish painting’s Golden Age—a period of cultural efflorescence during the first half of the 19th century. Marine subjects were among the artist’s favorite, and the primary focus of his work beginning in the 1820s. Dating from this period, this drawing depicts Russian ships viewed from a fortress in Copenhagen’s harbor. In his journal, Eckersberg described making the trip to see the fleet with friends and waiting for the waters to become calm enough for sailing. To convey this experience, he juxtaposed precise perspective of the landscape with expressively rendered clouds. Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg depicted the view seen in this work, of Copenhagen from the small island of Trekroner, in several other works including a painting in Denmark’s Hirschsprung Collection.

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