Jørgen Sonne
Study for Shepherds in the Roman Campagna, c. 1835
Pencil and wash on paper, 200 x 280 mm.
Inventory number: 0220NMK
Acquired with funding from the wills of Director Per Vilhelm & Mygge Kolbing-Nielsen, 2017
Jørgen Sonne (1801-1890)
Sonne stands out among his generation’s Danish painters by not having been studied under C.W. Eckersberg. Instead, he sought his artistic impulses other places, including Munich, where he was trained as a battle painter. He depicted battle scenes from the war in 1864, where the museum’s founder Johannes Hage was at the frontline. Sonne’s figure compositions follow a stylised and monumental aesthetic, but his landscape studies are more free and sketch-like. Between 1831-40, Sonne lived in Rome, where he was primarily interested in atmospheric depictions of peasant life in genre painting. In 1846-50, Sonne carried out the friezes at Thorvaldsen’s museum with the characteristically stylised figure groups in cement plaster.
