He went to Copenhagen as a young man to be trained as an artist at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
[2] After his studies at the Art Academy he visited the German painter Philipp Otto Runge in Dresden in 1802.
In 1799 he won the Great Silver Medal and undertook an overseas trip with royal support, joining the Danish-German colony in Rome where he stayed from 1802 to 1810.
Although his work at the academy lacked accuracy in drawing and harmony in color, his pictures were so very good that he was conferred an agré in 1812.
A year later he painted the architect Christian Frederik Hansen and Count Heinrich Carl von Schimmelmann's portraits.