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Pupils from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen Draw after Thorvaldsen's Statue of Georgiana Elizabeth Russel, D1840
  • Production Date

    1839
  • Type of Work / Object

    Drawing

Explanation

  • Ferdinand Richardt’s drawing provides an insight into teaching in the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in 1839. The situation was that the famous Thorvaldsen had been a professor there since 1805 though without raising as much as a single pedagogical finger, for of course he lived and worked in Rome during this time and could in practice not occupy his chair before returning to Denmark in 1838. But by the time this drawing was created, the master had returned. The sculpture which the young artists are busy drawing is Thorvaldsen’s Georgiana Elisabeth Russel, the daughter of the English Duke of Bedford, whom he modelled in Rome in 1815. Richardt became a landscape artist in the sense that he mainly painted topographically correct scenes – originally of Danish localities, not least the Danish country mansions, but later, quite unusually for an artist of the Danish Golden Age, of places in Canada and the USA, where he settled in 1893 and lived until his death.

Dimension

  • Height 303 mm
  • Width 358 mm
  • Inscription / Certification / Label

    Charlottenborg 1839 / F. Richardt
  • Type

    Inscription