b y b r i t t a t ø n d b o r g n ot all canons in art occur or materialise as a result of a slow evolution which occurs over the years, process that resembles Darwinian gradually eliminating the lesser works of art to give room for the winners. Canons are not always a retrospective account or selective view of the past that can enable us to create coherence or identify a body of work which art historians consider the prize winners of high art in the struggle for survival in posterity.
1 A particular canon in nineteenthcentury Danish art history did not evolve, it was forged; not merely retrospectively, but also actively in its own present time. The following illustrates how selective purchasing and display at Denmark’s first public gallery of fine art made it possible for art historian
N.L. Høyen to secure canonical status for a collection of works of art that were later dubbed Danish Golden Age art.
2
In the first half of the nineteenth century
Denmark was in the process of losing its status as a great and prosperous kingdom. In
1807 the English bombarded Copenhagen and captured the Danish fleet. The loss of
Norway in 1814, and later the duchies of
Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg reduced the Kingdom to a small nation. The economy was dire; it reached an all-time low with the state bankruptcy of 1813. The nation and its people had fallen upon hard times, but as
Denmark struggled to find a new identity as a little country, the arts prospered. The first half of the nineteenth century saw the evolution of what has been termed Danish
Golden Age art. For the first time Danish artists devoted themselves to painting – and thereby defining – the national landscape, the nation’s history, its monuments and its people. This tied in well with contemporary political developments.
The early nineteenth century was also the time when modern museums were established both in Denmark and abroad. The
Royal Gallery of Paintings ( Det Kongelige
Billedgallerie) opened to the public in makeshift premises in 1827.
3
Art history became the narrative to which the displays and interpretation of the former royal collections were related. In Denmark connoisseurs and later art historians in charge of the new National Art Gallery strove to present a permanent exhibition that provided national art with a heritage, giving it its own particular place in the history of art.
This was quite an achievement as there were no works of art at that time that had been created with a national Danish agenda in mind. Nonetheless, the Gallery became the venue where a national art form was forged in the first half of the nineteenth century. A
Danish history of art was created by restructuring the display of paintings and by regrouping them. Massive purchase of contemporary Danish art which very much qualified as national art furthered the process. This was done not only to add substance to the notion of a unique national art form, but also to reinterpret the existing royal collections and to inscribe them in a new context that celebrated the nation and not the monarch. Subsequently, the reinterpretation also secured the role of the art historian as the designated custodian of the public art collection, both practically and intellectually.
This particular chapter of history saw the transformation from Court to State and the emergence of national art museums in continental Europe, some of which were based on former royal collections of art.
Within this new breed of national galleries there are many variations. The French,
German, British, Danish, and Spanish national galleries differ in many ways in content and approach, and also with regard to how they were established.
4
The Louvre and later the National Gallery in London displayed high art of international standard but no contemporary art, whereas in the new
National Gallery in Copenhagen there was a strong emphasis on national and contemporary art. The common denominator was accessibility. The new national art galleries were opened to the general public, and the paintings exhibited were presented according to art history as the governing principle.
In Denmark, some kind of state governmental system was beginning to emerge; this system was based on both archaic and modern modes of governance and culminated in the abolition of the absolute monarchy and the implementation of a constitution in 1849. Unlike France, there was no revolution to accelerate the
119 e n g l i s h v e r s i o n

process, but eventually Denmark too was governed by principles of justice, rather than divine right. The relationship between the new state government and the public museums was based on a growing desire within the administration to control society and to implement bourgeois patterns of conduct and morality. The idea was to improve the general public by enabling it to moderate and govern its own conduct, based on the belief that moral betterment resulted in law-abiding citizens. Museums, libraries and schools were deemed well suited to educate the new citizens in the new nation state. In addition the National Gallery in
Copenhagen also became the display case for a new national art form, which celebrated the nation state, its people, its history and its monuments. This period in Danish museum history was a time when fine art, the state and the art museum were closely interrelated, utilising each other and working together. It was a time when art and politics went hand in hand.
Because a national art form was a new concept, the first challenge for the art historian was to adapt the existing collection of international art to the new national agenda. Most art that had either been produced in Denmark before the nineteenth century or had been purchased for the royal collections was not by Danish nationals; furthermore, it was executed in a style that was demonstrably international. Art had been commissioned by a succession of kings, and kings did not want local flavour, they wanted the best the world could offer. This is not to say that the Crown did not support the nation’s artists. As in other countries, the
Danish Crown supported the education of artists from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, by providing proper training in a newly established Academy of Art. Danish nationals were also given commissions on competitive terms with foreigners and therefore art acquired a distinctly international or European style at the time.
Until this time, patrons of the art had been content to use local or Danish artists to paint their portraits, or portray their women or livestock. The occasional historical painter was engaged to preserve events for posterity, but generally speaking, when it came to collecting art, old masters were purchased abroad as they were considered a safe investment. In the nineteenth century there was a change of attitude: patrons of the arts began actively supporting Danish artists who shared their interest in art as a national concern.
Attitudes were changing at the public art gallery as well. This article deals with
Denmark’s first art historian N.L. Høyen
(1798-1870), who was in charge of the
National Gallery in Denmark from 1839-70.
Høyen started a benign yet determined campaign to forge a national school of art at a time when Denmark was undergoing a transition from monarchy to nation state and striving to find a national identity in the process. This process illustrates how the world of fine art became part of a political agenda, and how this new canon was received in Denmark at the time.
The following illustrates how Høyen contributed considerably to forging a national or patriotic canon for art: (1) Høyen played a leading role in defining and introducing the new canon. (2) He used the Gallery to recast the past and create a historical pedigree for
Danish art. (3) Høyen reserved the privilege of hanging his own purchases at the Gallery, and ignored the King’s preferences. (4) He introduced a selective acquisition policy. (5)
Any criticism was by and large ignored, thus creating one dominant voice.
Høyen’s leading role in forging a national art form is well documented. Less well known is how Høyen exploited his position at the
Gallery to establish a Danish history of art through his hangings; and how he simultaneously strengthened the notion of a national art form by purchasing for the nation’s art museum contemporary art that qualified as national art.
Høyen was of course not alone in campaigning for the national, as a preference for Nordic history and Norse mythology had prevailed in Denmark in both literature and fine art since the early nineteenth century. In
1819 the archaeologist Finn Magnussen was employed at the Royal Academy of Art to lecture on Norse Mythology, in order to inspire the young artists to draw on this subject matter for their historical paintings.
There was initial skepticism among some of the students, as well as both Professor
Eckersberg and Høyen. But in 1821, Høyen embarked on an eighteen-month trip to
Germany, in the course of which he became acquainted with the German painters of
Romantic landscapes in Dresden. As a consequence, he reviewed his attitude. On his return to Copenhagen he began advocating a national art form, and in 1844 he gave a seminal lecture to the
Scandinavian Society entitled “Regarding the
Conditions for the Development of a
Scandinavian National Art Form”.
5
He now encouraged artists to study and draw on
Nordic history and mythology, the character of the Nordic peoples, and Nordic architecture and landscape. The inspiration for this new program for the arts came from the German J.G. Herder’s writings (between
1770 and 1791), essentially criticizing the dominant tendency to base subject matter on
Classical Antiquity instead of national and contemporary issues.
6
In 1844, when Høyen gave his seminal lecture, he was already employed at the
Gallery, where he favored contemporary artists whose art drew on the particular subject matter and employed a style that
Høyen recognized as specifically Danish.
Høyen was very powerful at the time; he occupied every key post within the world of fine art in Denmark: he was in charge of the nation’s art gallery and he was co-founder of
Kunstforeningen (equivalent to the German
Kunstverein) that supported contemporary
Danish artists. Furthermore, Høyen lectured in art history at both the university and the academy, and he wrote extensive reviews of the annual academy exhibitions.
Høyen’s predecessor as Director of the
Gallery, J.C. Spengler (1767-1838), was appointed to provide the nation with its first specialised gallery for fine art, based on the royal collections. Det Kongelige Billedgallerie opened in 1824. In this new gallery Spengler arranged the paintings according to schools, the German, the Flemish, the various Italian schools and so on, according to the norm at the time. In addition, he also attempted to define a Danish section based on the paintings available.
In the first ever catalogue raisonné
(1824) of the collection, Spengler grouped the works by 39 Danish artists and foreign e n g l i s h v e r s i o n
120

artists who had worked in Denmark together under the label of Danish Masters. He did not consider this selection of paintings to constitute a homogenous school of painting; instead Danish Masters mainly comprised foreign artists such as the Dutch painter
Karel van Mandern III (1609-70), who had served under three Danish kings: Christian IV,
Frederik III and Christian V. There were also the Dutch artists Abraham Wuchters (1608-
82), and Cornelius Gijsbrecht (c. 1610-75), who also arrived in Denmark in the seventeenth century to work for the Danish court. The group included the eighteenthcentury portrait painter Carl Gustav Pilo
(1711-93) and the landscape painter Johan
Edvard Mandelberg (1730-86). Both were born in Sweden, but lived and worked in
Copenhagen. The collection also contained paintings by French and German artists, or artists born in Denmark who had studied abroad and returned to work in Denmark.
This meant that they all painted in different styles, or belonged to schools of painting that did not qualify as specifically Danish.
Although this group of paintings was diverse in style, Spengler hung the canvases together in a designated gallery for the older generation of Danish Masters.
Spengler’s selection of Danish Masters also comprised a handful of younger artists born in Denmark, who were his own contemporaries.
7
This group of painters was on display in a second, smaller gallery next to the previous one containing the older generation. This group of artists was comprised of painters such as N.A.
Abildgaard (1744-1809), Jens Juel (1745-
1802), Elias Meyer (1763-1809), Chr.G.
Kratzenstein-Stub (1783-1816), and Samuel
Mygind (1784-1817).
History painting was still regarded as the superior genre in the late eighteenth century, but now times were changing. Landscape painting eventually took the place of history painting, in the sense that it was landscape painting and sketching out in the open that preoccupied the young painters in the 1830s and 1840s in Denmark. Two landscape painters included in Spengler’s exhibition were an inspiration to the landscape painters of the next generation: Jens Juel and J.C.
Dahl (Dahl was in fact Norwegian), who both painted Danish landscapes. Dahl was inspired by Friedrich and brought the romantic style to Denmark. J.C. Dahl lived with Friedrich in Dresden in 1818, where they received a visit from the Danish Crown
Prince (later Christian VIII); the Prince purchased two moonlight paintings by
Friedrich.
8 Dahl’s contemporary Jens Juel also came to be regarded as the early representative of what was to become a
Danish School of painting, in the view of later generations of art historians.
In Spengler’s day the emphasis in the new public art gallery was on the international.
Spengler’s permanent exhibition boasted an almost complete survey of the history of art, represented by the major schools and artists of all periods and supplemented with a selection of Danish artists. To complete the picture, copies and lesser works of art, such as workshop pieces, were tolerated. As a result the Gallery resembled that of other galleries of the time, like the national galleries in Vienna and Berlin: a collection of international art and old masters, representing the entire narrative of the history of art for the educational benefit of the visitors.
When Høyen took over, things changed radically. First of all, Høyen and his colleague
Chr. Jürgensen Thomsen 9 ensured that the public were given free access to Det
Kongelige Billedgallerie, by benevolently giving up half their salary. Høyen began by refurbishing and rehanging the entire collection when they took over in 1839-40.
He removed all the works of art on display he regarded as unauthentic, drawing on his knowledge as art historian and connoisseur.
Authenticity was the key concept in this new historicized display. Høyen was especially severe in ousting the copies and lesser works of art among the Italian and Dutch paintings.
10 The result was that the remaining collection was no longer substantial enough for him to present an international survey of the history of art.
Instead Høyen focussed on national art both past and contemporary.
Spengler’s former selection of Danish paintings was greatly reduced. In their case it was not just a matter of authenticity, but also an attempt to redefine what essentially
Danish art was. After having removed a great number of paintings in the early years, Høyen continued to expand the group of artists or paintings that represented the Danish
Masters throughout his career as curator.
According to a handwritten catalogue of
Høyen’s revision in 1839-40, he rejected two thirds of the entire collection. Out of the 220 paintings that were assigned to the Danish
Masters in Spengler’s day only 71 paintings by artists associated with Denmark could be viewed in the Gallery after the revision.
According to Hertz, Høyen reduced the group of paintings that had been labelled Danish
Masters in Spengler’s day by implementing a new criterion: for works of art to be Danish, they had to be executed by Danish nationals.
The foreign painters who had worked in
Denmark in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were either removed or allocated to other schools related to their actual style of painting, and painters such as Gijsbrechts were therefore displayed elsewhere in the
Gallery.
11 This approach provided Høyen with a small, but more homogenous selection of paintings that he dispersed in two galleries dedicated to Danish art: a gallery for the older generation where one could find painters such as Abildgaard, Jens Juel and
I.C. Dahl (Spengler’s contemporaries); and then Høyen added a gallery for a new generation of young artists, and in the years to come Høyen expanded this part of the collection considerably.
12
Høyen was not alone in purchasing contemporary Danish art for the Gallery. His benefactor King Christian VIII also bought a number of paintings by contemporary Danish artists, but Høyen deliberately chose not to display most of the King’s purchases. The two had different tastes in art, and in the following years a dispute over acquisitions and Høyen’s selective approach arose.
In 1827 Det Kongelige Billedgallerie opened to the general public. The year before, the
Crown Prince and later King Christian VIII began purchasing paintings for the Gallery.
The King deliberately purchased young artists, instead of just commissioning fullyfledged masters, nationals and non-nationals.
In the years to come the King continued purchasing and commissioning art for the
Gallery and for the royal residences, just as his forefathers had done before him.
When Høyen and Thomsen took up their posts in 1839, there was no sum set aside for the curators at the Gallery to purchase art for, much to their frustration. They had to make do with what was purchased for them.
But gradually Høyen and his colleague
Thomsen managed to set aside a sum of
121 e n g l i s h v e r s i o n

money for acquisitions, a sum that increased over the years. They purchased the works they believed in at the same annual Academy exhibitions as the King. The result was that during the 1840s, the acquisitions for the
Gallery had two sources, and these acquisitions illustrated the tensions in the
Danish art world at the time. The struggle was over style of painting and content. The
Gallery was used to stage the art that the art historian cultivated and encouraged, whereas the King’s purchases for the Gallery were often put in storage.
King Christian VIII purchased a seascape by Anton Melbye in 1842. In style it resembles the contemporary German romantic painters such as Friedrich. This particular style of painting was not to Høyen’s liking. Høyen preferred the calm and measured style demonstrated by Danish painters such as Emanuel Larsen (1823-59), who had adopted a style more in tune with what Høyen believed to be typically Danish.
The King was not alone in enjoying a more international taste when it came to style of painting. Melbye’s paintings were popular with the general public at the time, and therefore Melbye was mentioned as one of the artists that Høyen deliberately excluded from his display of Danish art in the gallery. I shall return to this later.
13
Most of the paintings Christian VIII purchased were historical paintings, seascapes, and also a few landscapes but not by the younger generation of painters. One particular genre the King bought in bulk for his castles was flower paintings. As many as three paintings a year by flower painters J.L.
Jensen, Christine Løvmand (1803-72) and
Hermania Neergaard (1799-1875) were purchased for display at the royal castles, although some were bought for the Gallery and one would assume, much to Høyen’s annoyance.
14
Flower painting was considered an inferior genre at the time.
The King commissioned and purchased another marine painting by C.W. Eckersberg
(1783-1853). It depicts the King overseeing a manoeuvre at sea from his recent and very modern purchase, a steam-ship. Eckersberg was professor at the Academy at the time and also a great influence on the generation of painters that became known as the Danish
Golden Age artists. Eckersberg spent years in
Rome sketching and painting and later returned to lecture at the Academy on perspective drawing. Høyen did not purchase
Eckersberg’s paintings for the Gallery; instead the King and Kunstforeningen were good clients. Kunstforeningen purchased paintings and passed them on to their members at annual lotteries.
Kunstforeningen played a key-role in dispersing contemporary art to a select group of art lovers. Between 1830 and 1850
Kunstforeningen purchased no less than 551 paintings primarily by the same young artists that Høyen also favoured, not surprisingly as he was a founding member; among them were Christen Købke (1810-48), Martinus
Rørbye (1803-48), Constantin Hansen
(1804-80), Jørgen Roed (1808-88) and
Wilhelm Marstrand (1810-73).
15
Another example of the two different tastes in art represented by the King and the art historian that Villads Villadsen describes in his book on the history of the National
Gallery, Statens Museum for Kunst, concerns a large canvas by Simonsen depicting a proud and exotic Bedouin family in the desert. The King purchased this painting by
Niels Simonsen in 1846. In Høyen’s view this painting was an example of the theatricality and empty bravado which was typical when artists painted motifs they had never experienced themselves. Painting had to be rooted in reality, and preferably depict something national as well. The following year Høyen purchased a painting that illustrated his idea of how artists should try and capture the Danish national character.
Jørgen Sonne had achieved just that with his depiction of a pre-Christian scene. Dignity, honesty, and simplicity were the sought after virtues, not only in the people, but also in painting.
16 That both motifs were equally fictitious was apparently not a cause for concern in Høyen’s mind, as he favoured the national.
It becomes quite clear that Høyen disagreed with the King’s dispositions when one looks at the remarks jotted down in the gallery acquisition inventories. The dispute rears its head for the first time in the 1844 inventory concerning a state portrait commissioned by the King The Coronation of
King Christian VIII and Queen Caroline
Amalie, by painter Sophus Schack (1811-
64). In the gallery inventory someone has jotted down that the painting was “Received under orders”. Similar remarks continue to appear in the acquisition inventory in the years to come. It is noted that a painting has been purchased at the annual exhibition at the Academy of Art, or it merely reads
“Received under orders”, or “Purchased by the King and likewise received under orders”.
Another example concerns a marine painting by Eckersberg: Ships in the Sound North of
Kronborg Castle, Elsinore, where the inventory reads: “Purchased at the exhibition at the Academy. 1848. Cat. No. 239.
Purchased by himself for 60 Rdl.” 17
It is evident that Høyen insisted that he was in charge of the nation’s art Gallery and that the purchases made and displayed were the paintings that celebrated the nation and its people, not the works of art that celebrated the monarch. This was a bold stance in 1844, some years before the power of the King was diminished when Denmark got a constitution in 1849. One wonders whether Høyen’s decision not to include
Schack’s state portrait in the collection was a wise one; after all, the coronation in question concerned his employer, the reigning King
Christian VIII,
18 the same King that had appointed Høyen and financed the refurbishment of the Gallery when Høyen took up his post in 1839-40, and the same
King that provided funding for purchases.
Perhaps as a result of this, it was Høyen’s colleague Thomsen who enjoyed a better standing and consequently had direct communication with the King and dealt with official matters.
There is further evidence that the art historian strove to distance the new public institution from its royal ancestry. Since the days of the former royal Kunstkammer (c.
1640-1800) portraits of Danish royalty had been on display in the royal Danish collections. In fact the whole collection of curiosities, art, specimens, and so on in the
Kunstkammer was displayed as a tribute to the reigning monarch, and only the Monarch and a few others had access. When Spengler was in charge of the public art gallery, a complete display of thirty-two portraits of a succession of Danish Kings and Queens was exhibited in the Gallery.
19 Høyen discontinued this tradition. There was no display of royal portraits in the Gallery under his aegis.
It was and still is customary in museums to celebrate the benefactor or head of state by displaying their portrait, naming galleries after them or putting up plaques. Høyen paid no such tribute during Christian VIII’s reign.
Even today Statens Museum for Kunst celebrates its art historians and not its royal e n g l i s h v e r s i o n
122

heritage. Portrait busts of Høyen and a later colleague, art historian Julius Lange (1838-
1896) greet visitors to Statens Museum for
Kunst at the main entrance.
20
One could argue that this is a fair warning of what awaits the visitors within. The collections are arranged and displayed according to art history principles, and not to celebrate a monarch.
The lists of acquisitions made between 1839 and 1870, the years Høyen was employed at the Gallery, reveal that approximately 520 works of art entered the collection in that period, either as purchases or transfers from royal residences to the Gallery.
21 Only a hundred of these went on display in the
Gallery, and they were primarily by contemporary Danish painters. All of the acquisitions made in that thirty year period were Danish contemporary art. It would be no exaggeration to conclude that Høyen had introduced a very selective acquisition policy.
So what did Høyen prefer when purchasing national Danish art? Landscape painting became a preferred genre, replacing the former glory of history painting. One of
Høyen’s favourite young artists was J.Th.
Lundbye (1818-48), who according to Høyen mastered the art of depicting the Danish landscape in a conspicuously Danish style.
Høyen purchased a total of seven paintings by Lundbye for the Gallery, twelve were bought by Kunstforeningen, three by
Thorvaldsen, and none by the King; the King preferred the older generation of landscape painters. Høyen dedicated a lot of time and effort to discussing art with Lundbye.
Lundbye’s efforts not only to capture the
Danish landscape but also to provide an alternative to the dramatic and rocky landscape paintings favoured abroad at the time were summarized in his large canvas from 1843: A Danish Coast. View from
Kitnæs by Roskilde Fjord. Høyen purchased the painting for the Gallery in the same year.
This painting has been on display more or less continuously ever since and is still regarded as a painting that epitomises the canon of Danish Golden Age art.
Another artist that the King did not favour, but Høyen and Kunstforeningen bought (the latter in bulk) was the young painter Købke. A large canvas exhibited at the annual Academy exhibition Motif from
Capri, Soon after Sunrise was purchased for the Gallery in 1844. It was displayed together with another very popular painting by Købke, a view of a bustling street in
Copenhagen, entitled Morning View of
Østerbro from 1836.
Today there is an emphasis not on the finished and sometimes large-scale showpieces intended for display at the annual Academy shows, like Købke’s Capri painting. Today we favour the small sketches because of their distinct painterly qualities.
Købke was particularly apt at painting small sketches that appeal to museum visitors today. Private collectors purchased these sketches from the artist during his lifetime or at auction after his death in 1848, and later passed them on to the public art museums; or they were sold to fetch high prices at auctions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
It is interesting to look at the response to
Høyen’s project of forging a national art form.
The term ‘forging’ suggests that something or someone was left out while others were promoted and rewarded, and that was in fact the case.
For some artists the new political agenda had severe consequences. In 1840 a law was passed stating that Danish was to be the official state language of the administration, schools, courtrooms, and churches in
Denmark. As the National Liberals gained power, reservations towards Germans and even German-speaking subjects grew. One of the young exponents of the national school of
Danish Golden Age landscape painting was
Louis Gurlitt (1812-97). Initially Høyen supported the young painter and purchased landscapes by him for Den kongelige
Malerisamling. On display in 1842 was his
Prospect of Kullen purchased in 1839-40, along with the depiction of another rocky coastline also by this promising young painter.
22 But in 1853 Gurlitt had been excluded. His name simply ceases to appear in the catalogues, which suggests that
Gurlitt’s paintings had been removed from the Gallery walls. The problem was that Louis
Gurlitt came from Holstein and spoke
German, and in a heated atmosphere he was forced to choose between his native Holstein and a career as a painter in Copenhagen.
Gurlitt chose Holstein, and his work was eliminated from public view for the time being. By the time his Danish landscape paintings were removed, Gurlitt had already left Copenhagen, and instead went on to become a prominent member of the
Düsseldorf School of painters.
23
But Høyen did not bar Gurlitt’s paintings from the Gallery forever. The 1869 catalogue reveals that two of Gurlitt’s paintings went back on display. This time it was not the rocky Swedish coastline of Kullen that was put on display, but a view of what was believed to be Denmark’s tallest ‘mountain’,
Himmelbjerget.
History is written by the winners. It is possible to find some criticism of Høyen’s dispositions by his contemporaries, but this did not result in a change of direction – at least not in Høyen’s day. The reason for this could be that the process of forging a national art form was so well timed and in tune with the political, social and cultural mindset at the time.
In most literature on Høyen and his hand in creating a national canon for Danish art, authors often quote the same critical voice; it is a critique of Høyen’s use or abuse of power. The criticism that did arise was directed at Høyen himself, not his followers – the artists. The critical voice published a caricature of Høyen in a weekly satirical magazine, and questioned the choices Høyen made by favouring some contemporary artists, while ignoring others:
“Who laid Adam Müller in his grave? Who forced Simonsen to flee the country? Who is it that wants to chase Gertner and Melbye off because they do not draw with a ruler? Who takes care of the purchases made by the King at the annual exhibitions, intended to encourage the young artists, and prefers instead, not flourishing, fresh life, but dead, spiritless rules?”
24
The anonymous author also questioned
Høyen’s right to dispose over the King’s purchases, which suggests that the author represented those opposed to the National
Liberals and their crusade to overthrow the monarchy. The year was 1845 and it was impossible not to see Høyen’s project to forge a national art form as part of a political agenda, as his approach to art corresponded with the political agenda of the National
Liberals at the time.
What about the artists? What was their response to the new agenda? Not everybody was in favour, or at least not all the time. In a private letter written in 1847 by Wilhelm
Marstrand, one of those later to be celebrated
123 e n g l i s h v e r s i o n

as Golden Age artists, to his colleague
Constantin Hansen, Marstrand questions why art and politics should be paired. Marstrand questions why contemporary art should limit itself to a political agenda, and not concern itself with aestheticism.
“What have politics, nationality and taxes got to do with painterly effects and beautiful lines? What does national art mean? Does it mean politically Danish from border to border and all things within those boundaries? Or does it mean Nordic, including Nordic history and the Sagas? […] No, just as the same sun shines over the entire world, art has no boundaries; it serves only beauty and truth.” 25
Marstrand’s critique illustrates how strongly a political agenda prevailed in fine art at the time, and how some artists were reluctant to subject themselves to this particular canon.
If one is to criticize Høyen’s dispositions in retrospect regarding purchases, it is not the fact that he used his positions and power to forge and promote a national art form, which was bound to have happened anyway judging from similar developments abroad – but the fact that his selective acquisition policy over a quarter of a century resulted in a lopsided collection. The ideal of presenting a survey history of art in the nation’s art gallery became more and more unattainable as the market prices for old masters rose.
26
When Høyen was in charge of the Danish public art gallery he did not manage to build up a collection that was strong on international and historical works of art. It has to be said that no funding was provided for this purpose, but one could also argue that it is interesting that no one fought to provide funds for international purchases that could counterbalance the strong emphasis on the national.
Høyen’s dispositions were criticized, and in 1866 it was decided to form an acquisition committee that took sole charge of acquisitions; the curators at the Gallery were not consulted. The committee was instated after Høyen’s death in 1870 and survived in its present form till 1895. After
1895 the art historians were again responsible for acquisitions, and now merely had to consult the committee regarding purchases. In fact the committee survived in various forms until the 1970s.
27
Høyen’s successors paid the price for his dispositions in spite of the fact that Golden
Age art was and still is very popular with the general public. The public enjoyed the paintings depicting national monuments, historic buildings, the national landscape, its people and other motifs that related to daily life.
Nineteenth century curators were quite explicit about and aware of their role as educators of the general public. At this point in time it was considered infallible that exposure to fine art, good literature and music would make you a better person and subsequently a better citizen. Unfortunately, very little source material reveals how exactly nineteenth-century curators sought to fulfil this mission through displaying art.
A few private letters offer glimpses of how
Høyen and his colleague Thomsen regarded museum visitors. In a letter from Thomsen to his friend Hildebrand in 1840, Thomsen reveals how Høyen responded to the lack of responsiveness to his efforts. Thomsen begins by explaining about his colleague
Høyen’s “stern mind and reasoning [with regard to the visitors]. It’s like this: when we arrange the hang according to what we think is best, then the visitors must like it. If they don’t know better, the visitors must learn what is right, if not in 10 then in 20 years.
The trouble is that the visitors aren’t so keen on all that they ‘must’”.
28
Another remark made by Thomsen in a letter in 1861 illustrates how he and Høyen were concerned with the visitors’ lack of interest in the old masters. He explains how they cunningly compensated for this lack of interest by ensuring that the visitors had to pass through the galleries where the old masters were displayed, in order to get to the popular contemporary paintings by Danish artists. Thomsen was convinced that interest in the old masters would gradually grow on the visitors as a direct result of their cunning plan.
29
Later in life, in a lecture Høyen gave in
1863 on National Art, Høyen presented his view on why contemporary and national art was so immensely popular with the visitors:
“Through art we feel united as a people: works of art that explain about our ancestors, our land and our time. In the gallery at present there are numerous excellent paintings by old masters. When these paintings dominated the exhibition, and the paintings by Danish artists were fewer and did not arouse as much attention, the gallery only received a limited number of visitors; but from the moment when Danish paintings became more abundant – paintings that illustrate the life and inspiring deeds of the
Danish people – the part of the gallery with the Danish paintings became so heavily frequented that the very floorboards show that the visitors favoured Danish art over the old masters. And this is the fate of all national collections of art. The old, more remote paintings speak a foreign language, whereas with contemporary art that provides the nation with a voice, the language is understood and enjoyed. So it is all about the national. It has become a battle cry, so to speak, all over Europe; everywhere they want the unique, the national.” 30
He was right, of course. Patriotism was a determining factor in the founding of all the
European nation-states at the time, and art and museums played an important role in the visualization of state ideologies. The art collections that had originally been amassed to glorify the kings were recast so as to be beneficial to the nation and its people. The success of the transformation, at least in
Denmark, rested also on the forging of a national canon in art. As the nation did not own a comprehensive collection of historical works of art, a strong emphasis on the contemporary and the national contributed greatly to the process.
Høyen’s plan to utilise the Gallery to display the national canon was a success.
The public liked it, the government sanctioned it, patrons of fine art supported it, and as a result the favoured artists thrived.
With the national art in place and a national gallery to exhibit it in, all that was missing was a written survey history of Danish art.
Høyen had already thought of this; he had in fact received the annual sum of 400 Rdl since 1831 from the Royal foundation ad usus publicos, specifically donated to Høyen so he could write a general history of Danish art. He had applied for the funding himself after he had travelled through the Danish provinces in 1829-33, studying art and architecture.
Another incentive came in the shape of a letter from his colleague at the
Gemäldegalerie in Berlin in 1840. Director
Waagen in Berlin explained how he intended to spend the following year studying the e n g l i s h v e r s i o n
124

research material he had gathered in order to write the history of German art.
31
Waagen published his Kunstwerke und Künstler in
Deutschland in two volumes in 1843-45. But unlike his German colleague, Høyen never found the time to write a history of Danish art, although he did publish articles on
Danish architecture and reviewed the annual exhibitions at the Academy.
A Nordic history of art and architecture and an index of Nordic artists had been published previously by the librarian and titular councillor of state Niels Henrich
Weinwich, in 1811 and 1829 respectively.
Weinwich’s history of Nordic art revolves around the Crown; it is a chronological account based on the succession of Danish
Oldenburg kings, describing the buildings they erected and the artists they employed over the years. Weinwich was not concerned with detecting and forging a distinctive
Danish art form, which would have been
Høyen and his contemporaries’ priority in compiling a survey. Weinwich’s survey did not attract much attention in its own time, nor is it referred to very often in contemporary or later literature on Danish art.
As a young man and an ardent student of the history of art, Johan Conrad Spengler also attempted a “Danish Art History”, in
1818.
32
It is a history as such; it comprises a collection of biographies of artists who had worked in Denmark. The biographies are arranged alphabetically and not chronologically. Like Weinwich, Spengler did not concern himself with defining specific aesthetic traits that could be identified as being particularly Danish. Spengler’s publication qualifies as an early attempt to describe artists and art on their own terms, without emphasizing the social and political context in which the art was produced; or, rather, Spengler emphasized another context
– the affiliation with the nation:
“Continuously preoccupied with the study of art history, and in particular the art history of the Fatherland, I have recorded such items of information as I was able to regarding deceased artists who were born, had worked or lived here, and could be regarded as part of Danish art history”.
33
Only nine years later in 1827 Spengler was made responsible for the display of the
Royal collection of art and used this opportunity to introduce his version of a
Danish art history in the exhibition, just as his successor Høyen did again in 1839. As
Prior has pointed out, “the formation of a glorious and continuous past, in which national traditions are legitimated in the present, is an enduring feature of nations and states”.
34 The idea has prevailed that identity, both individual and national, is shaped by knowledge of past. And consequently literary achievements such as Spengler’s museum catalogue raisonné and Høyen’s Gallery displays, delivered substantial input to the ongoing project of educating the public by exhibiting and interpreting historic objects.
This is still the way in which today’s museum directors explain why we need museums and their content. According to an interview with
Neil MacGregor, the former Director of the
National Gallery in London, we need them today to understand not only our national past, but also our common European past:
“It’s through the understanding of where we’ve come from that we can make sense of where we are and have the confidence to go forward. The point of a tradition is that it lets you innovate. The great danger is that pretwentieth-century Europe is slipping out of sight, for two reasons: partly it’s felt that the modern, the now is more important, and partly because today we live in a world that goes far beyond Europe and where many of our fellow citizens are not of European origin ethnically, so it is felt that to focus on the
European tradition is somehow to exclude and that only the contemporary can encompass everybody.” 35
The two quotations above illustrate how the historical narratives applied to national collections have changed from the nineteenth century to the present day. The nineteenthcentury priority was to forge national pasts, while today’s museum directors lay claim to a common European past; at the same time the
MacGregor quotation illustrates the concern that the emphasis on contemporary art in the name of inclusion can make us forgetful of our past. This is the same issue that concerned Spengler and Høyen, when they observed how visitors in the nineteenth century hurried past the old masters in order to spend time with the contemporary works of art, the Danish Golden Age paintings.
1 Canon means a standard; concerning art it refers to a group of works that are considered to be of indisputable quality or central to a given set of references. A multitude of canons can be drawn up and often the standards change over the years. See also Gill Perry and Colin
Cunningham (eds.): Art and Its Histories: Academies,
Museums and Canons of Art.
New Haven and London 1999.
2 This article is in part based on chapters from my Ph.D. thesis. Britta Tondborg : From Kunstkammer to art museum: Exhibiting and cataloguing art in the Royal collections in Copenhagen, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries , Courtauld Institute of Art and
Statens Museum for Kunst, 2004; and on a paper presented in Bern, in 2005.
I would like to thank Dr. Tristan Weddingen, Institut für
Kunstgeschichte, Bern for reviewing this paper before I presented it at IX Nachwuchskolloquium für Kunstgeschichte in der Schweiz , November 2005. The colloquium theme was Kanon: Werke, Prozesse, Diskurse .
3 Modern in this context alludes to modernity in society and not modernism in art, it is a Foucault term that refers to the historicised principles of display that were introduced in the public art museums founded in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century. Michel
Foucault: Ordene og tingene. En arkæologisk undersøgelse af videnskaberne om mennesket , København (1966) 2003.
4 The following is a selection of titles based on different
‘case-stories’ that discuss and describe the emergence of the modern art museum. Carol Duncan: Civilizing
Rituals: Inside public art museums, London and New York
(1995) 1997. Andrew McClellan: Inventing the Louvre:
Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in
Eighteenth-Century Paris , Berkeley and Los Angeles
1994. Nick Prior: Museums and Modernity: Art Galleries and the Making of Modern Culture , Oxford and New York
2002. Alexis Joachimides, Sven Kuhrau, Viola Vahrson, and Nikolaus Bernau (eds.): Museumsinszernierungen:
Zur Geschichte der Institution des Kunstmuseums. Die Berliner
Museumslandschaft 1830-1990 , Dresden and Basel 1995.
5 Julius Lange: ”Høyen som Docent og Forfatter” (Høyen as lecturer and author) 1870-71, published in:
Brandes, Georg and P. Købke (eds.). Udvalgte skrifter af
Julius Lange . Vol. I-III, København 1900, vol. I, 351- 368.
6 William Gelius: ”Tyske landskabsmaleri i dansk guldalderpolitik”. 77-85. William Gelius and Stig Miss (eds.):
Under samme himmel: Land og by i dansk og tysk kunst
1800-1850 . Thorvaldsens Museum, København 2000, 77.
7 Villads Villadsen: Statens Museum for Kunst 1827-1952 ,
København 1998, 39.
8 Henrik Bramsen: Ny Dansk Kunsthistorie. Fra rokoko til guldalder . Vol. 3. København 1994, 234.
9 Christian Jürgensen Thomsen (1788-1865) was appointed curator together with N.L. Høyen in 1839 of the national art gallery (Det Kongelige Billedgalleri).
Thomsen is perhaps best known for inventing the three-age system which allowed for the chronological ordering of human prehistory into three consecutive time periods, named after the predominant tool- making technologies: the stone age, the bronze age and the iron age. Thus Thomsen provided the key for classifying and arranging collections of antiquities chronologically. Thomsen was also behind the founding of a number of specialized collections or museums
125 e n g l i s h v e r s i o n

founded in the first half of the nineteenth century, based on the former collections of the Royal
Kunstkammer. The bulk of the former Kunstkammer collections went to Kunstmuseet in Dronningens
Tværgade, run by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen.
Kunstmuseet had been preceded by a Museum for
Nordiske Oldsager (Museum of Nordic Antiquities).
Thomsen was appointed to reorganize this collection in
1817, and in 1819 he opened it to the public. At the time it was located in the loft at Trinitatis Church in
Copenhagen. The collection was moved in 1832 to
Christiansborg Palace, and finally it was installed in its present location at Prinsens Palais, in 1855. It is today’s Nationalmuseum, the National Museum of
Denmark. By that time the museum consisted of a range of specialized collections, Nordic antiquities, medieval items, precious metals, the first ever ethnographical museum (opened 1841), a numismatic collection, and so on. In 1852 Thomsen also found the time to establish a sculpture and design museum; it was short-lived, as it was dispersed after his death in
1865. Jørgen Jensen: Thomsens Museum. Historien om
Nationalmuseet.
København 1992.
10 Peter Hertz: ”Malerisamlingens tilvækst og tilpasning gennem tiderne. Galleriet under Spengler og Høyen’s revision”, Kunstmuseets Aarsskrift (1924-1925) XI-XII,
København 1926, 290-352, 330. This extensive article by Hertz is the key to understanding the revision of the
Gallery in 1839-40.
11 A handwritten table by Hansine Schack illustrates how eleven of the ‘formerly Danish’ paintings were assigned to another school, and one was assigned to both a different school and a different artist. Hansine Schack:
Malerisamlingen paa Christiansborg 1841, København
1841. Statens Museum for Kunst archive.
12 Høyen did not publish his thoughts on his dispositions at the Gallery, but it is possible to reconstruct events by looking at the Gallery guides by Le Maire that were published and republished almost annually during
Høyen’s years at the Gallery. In the first guide produced after the revision in 1840, all works of art were listed chronologically according to their Spengler inventory numbers, except in the last couple of pages of the guide, which were assigned to living artists. Contemporary
Danish artists such as Roed, Blunck, Gertner, Sonne,
Küchler, Gurlitt and Sødring represented The Living
Artists; all belonged to a school of painting that was later dubbed Danish Golden Age art. According to the guide, their paintings were displayed together in Gallery
I, where the visitor could experience contemporary
Danish art.
13 Villadsen, 57.
14 Ibid., 53.
15 Kasper Monrad: Hverdagsbilleder: Dansk Guldalder – kunstnere og deres vilkår, København 1989, 93-96.
16 Villadsen, 58-59.
17 „Kjøbt paa Udst. i Konstakad. 1848. kat. nr. 239. Kjøbt af ham selv for 60 Rdl.“ In 1844 six acquisitions (nos.
493, 494, 494a, 506-508) were adorned with remarks like “Modtaget efter Ordre” (Received according to orders), “Kjøbt af Kongen og ligeledes modtaget efter
Ordre” (Purchased by the King and likewise received according to orders), “Modtaget ifølge Chefens Ordre”
(Received according to the Boss’s orders). These flippant remarks suggest that the person who wrote these entries was rather dissatisfied with the King’s dispositions, and this person could have been none other than Høyen. In 1855 a new type of remark is added: “Kjøbt paa Udst. I Konstakad. 1855 efter
Inspecteurernes Indstilling” (Purchased at the art academy exhibition in 1855 according to the recommendation of the Inspecteur). At this time the other party purchasing art was no longer Christian VIII.
He had died in 1848. Now purchases were made at the recommendation of an appointed Directorate,
Overdirectoratet. The directorate for the Royal collections of art had been established on June 26,
1849 as an intermediary between the Ministry of
Church Affairs and Education and the Gallery, when the former Royal collections were handed over to the state.
18 The small printed catalogues by Le Maire that replaced labels in the Gallery and were on sale to the visiting public, reveal which paintings Høyen put on display and therefore also which paintings he put in storage. No catalogues were printed between 1844 and 1849. In the 1849 catalogue, the painting of the coronation is not included in the display. It would seem that Høyen had banned the painting and put it in storage. Christian
Ludvig le Maire: Fortegnelse over den Kongelige
Malerisamling paa Christiansborg Slot , København 1849.
19 Johan Conrad Spengler: Catalog over det Kongelige
Billedgalleri paa Christiansborg , København 1827, 549-550.
20 The busts were commissioned for the museum building in connection with its opening in 1898. Vilhelm Bissen
(1836-1913). Portrait of art historian N.L. Høyen.
Bronze, 1898. Ludvig Brandstrup (1861-1935).
Portrait of art historian Julius Lange. Bronze, 1898. Two full-length portraits of the artists H.W. Bissen and
Wilhelm Martrand were donated to the museum in
1900 and also placed at the entrance.
21 Statens Museum for Kunsts Inventar Protokol. SMKs
Centrale Arkiv. Inventarier, Arkivalier.
22 Christian Ludvig le Maire: Fortegnelse over den Kongelige
Malerisamling paa Christiansborg Slot , København 1842, 51.
23 William Gelius, 2000.
24 “Men hvo lagde Adam Müller i Graven? Hvo jog
Simonsen i Landflygtighed? Hvem er det, der nu vil jage
Getner og Melbye bort, fordi de ikke tegne efter Lineal?
Hvem besørger efter Udstillingen de kongelige Indkjøb, der skulle opmuntre de unge Kunstnre, og foretrækker da, ikke det frodige, friske Liv, men de døde, aandløse
Regler?” Quoted from the Satirical weekly Corsaren ,
December 1845. Quoted in: Monrad, 103.
25 Letter from Marstrand to Constantin Hansen (1846) quoted in: Karl Madsen: Vilhelm Marstrand , København
1905, 131-132.
26 Within a century the acquisition policy had turned around completely. In the eighteenth century the
Kunstkammerforvalter Morell exclusively purchased paintings by foreign artists; in the following century, when Høyen was appointed, he favored only native artists. It seems that acquisitions for the Royal gallery remained lopsided for almost a century.
27 Villadsen, 8.
28 „Stive sind og raisonment, det er således, når vi gør arrangementet efter, hvad vi tror er bedst, så skal publikum synes om det. Véd samme ikke bedre, skal publikum lære det rigtige om ej i 10, så i 20 år. Ulykken er, at publikum ej holder af alt, hvad der hedder skal.“
Chr.J. Thomsen in a letter to Hildebrand, dated
20.3.1840. Quoted in Kirsten-Elizabeth Høgsbro: ”N.L.
Høyen and Chr. J. Thomsen”, Meddelelser fra Thorvaldsens
Museum 1994 , Copenhagen 1994, 172-186, 180.
29 “Erfaring har nemlig viist at det stórre Publicum har langt mere Interesse for de nye Malerier end for de
ældre, men ved saa at sige at tvinge de Besogende til at gaae igjennem Salene hvor de ældre ere ophængte for at kome til de nyere oplades efterhaanden Øinene hos ikke Faae, for de ældre Mestres Fortræffelighed.”
Thomsen in a letter to “Deres Exellence!” (‘Your
Excellency’, i.e. the Lord Chamberlain) dated
15.3.1861. Statens Museums for Kunst Centrale Arkiv, brevarkivet.
30 “Trangen til i Konsten at føle sig som Folk, til at
Konstværkerne skulle fortælle os om vore Forfædre, om vort Land, om vor Tid. Oppe i vort Galleri hænge virkelig gode Billeder af ældre Konstnere, og saalænge disse
Billeder vare færre og ikke vakte nogen videre
Deltagelse, blev Galleriet saa temmelig taalelig besøgt overalt; men fra det Øjeblik af, at der i den danske
Afdeling kom Billeder frem, som talte om Folkelivet og om begejstrende Daad i Folket, blev den danske Afdeling saa stærkt besøgt, at Gulvet vidnede om, at Besøget gjældt dette Sted og ikke de gamle Malere. Og saaledes vil det gaa hos ethvert Folk, i enhver Samling. De gamle, fjernere Malerier ere et fremmed Sprog; hvor derimod
Samtiden, hvor Fædrelandet kommer til at tale, der forstaar man Sproget og glæder sig derover. Altsaa det er det Nationale! Det er det, der saa at sige er blevet
Feltraabet over hele Evropa; alle Vegne vil man nu have det Ejendommelige, det Nationale frem”. J. L. Ussing:
Niels Laurits Høyens Skrifter , vol. I-III, København 1871-
6, vol. III, 174-75.
31 “Ich habe auf meiner letzen Reise recht ansehliche
Beträge zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte gesammelt [...]
Die Verarbeitung dieses Materials wird mich mindestens dieses Jahr hier fest halten.” Letter from
Waagen to Höyen, dated 22.3.1840. NKS 1537.21.
32 Johan Conrad Spengler: Artistiske Efterretninger som
Bidrag til Dansk Kunsthistorie , Copenhagen 1818.
33 “Stedse sysselsat med at dyrke Kunsthistorien og især
Fædrenelandets, har jeg optegnet de Efterretninger, jeg kunde overkomme, betreffende afdøde Kunstnere, som ved Fødsel, ved Arbeider eller ved Ophold her, kunde henføres til den danske Kunsthistorie” Spengler,
Artistiske 1818, vol. III. In the next sentence Spengler explains that he had compared notes with Weinwich’s
1811 publication and found that many artists that he knew of had not been included, so he had mentioned them in his art history in brief entries.
34 Nick Prior: Museums and Modernity: Art Galleries and the
Making of Modern Culture, Oxford and New York 2002,
41-2.
35 Neil MacGregor, ”Art is much more important than art history”, The Art Newspaper , July 2002 e n g l i s h v e r s i o n
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