Danish Golden Age and landscape

The Danish landscape has been popularly reproduced by Danish artists ever since the Danish Golden Age which lasted from the beginning of the 19th century to the mid 19th century. Landscape paintings have been a source of great creativity throughout the history of Denmark although it may not seem like the most inspirational setting. The rolling hills and coastal scenes of Denmark have been known to be quite eye catching and during the Danish golden age, there were a great deal of new artists finding pleasure in recreating the unique yet simple Danish landscape in their works.

Although Danish landscape was often depicted In the works of Danish artists, it was not always an accurate representation of how the land actually looked. For example the foreground, middle ground and background are terms used to describe each area of a painting in order to break the work down and interpret it's deeper meaning. If you look at many of the paintings during the Danish golden age, you will see that some areas are illuminated and some are shaded darker than others. This manipulation of light and shading gives the illusion that the sun is in an ideal area of the sky when the work was being created. This has been done by the artist yo create a sense of an "ideal state". Although this is not how the landscape looks exactly when being painted, this is the artists interpretation of how it would look under ideal conditions. 

Many artists of the Danish golden age also dramatized other aspects of nature in their works by emphasizing aspects of nature such as higher cliffs and sharper edges in their paintings. This method was used to give power to nature, especially in the case of the beautiful but somewhat boring Danish landscape. Peter Christian Skovgaard's piece from 1856 called "Beechwood" has been studied by many artists for the presence of a prominent road featured in the painting. This seemingly minute detail is a trick of the eye that draws the attention of the onlooker and creates the illusion that the road extends much farther than it actually does. Another example of an important Danish landscape piece is by Cristen Købke who created "View from Dosseringen" in 1838. This coastal scene has a figure on a dock with many shrubs behind it with an exaggerated Danish flag in the background. 

The flag depicted promoted national thought in Denmark and is one of the reasons that this painting is so widely known today. The Danish landscape has provided many artists with a starting point for their creativity and has clearly affected the culture of the nation, especially in terms of their golden age. These paintings and artistic figures are just a few of the byproducts of this era of Danish history.

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