Danish Golden Age
In relation to music, the Golden Age covers figures inspired by Danish romantic nationalism including J. P. E. Hartmann, Hans Christian Lumbye, Niels W. Gade and the ballet master August Bournonville.
Copenhagen, the centre of the country's intellectual life, first experienced huge fires in 1794 and 1795 which destroyed both Christiansborg Palace and large areas of the inner city.
In 1801, as a result of the country's involvement in the League of Armed Neutrality, the Royal Navy successfully attacked a Danish fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen.
In 1807, on rumours that the French might force Denmark-Norway to close the Baltic to their shipping, the British bombarded Copenhagen, burning large portions of the city.
While art had previously served to uphold the monarchy and the establishment, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg and his students realized that, with the arrival of industrialization, the middle classes were increasingly gaining power and influence.
In addition, political reforms involving the end of the absolute monarchy in 1848 and the adoption of the Danish constitution the following year signalled the beginning of a new era.
In 1896, author Vilhelm Andersen saw the Golden Age initiated by Henrich Steffens as the richest period in the cultural history of Denmark.
Interior scenes, often small portrait groups, are also common, with a similar treatment of humble domestic objects and furniture, often of the artist's circle of friends.
Little Danish art was seen outside the country (indeed it mostly remains there to this day) although the Danish-trained leader of German Romantic painting Caspar David Friedrich was important in spreading its influence in Germany.
A crucial figure was Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, who had studied in Paris with Jacques-Louis David and was further influenced towards Neo-Classicism by the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.
[10] Prominent artists of the Danish Golden Age of Painting included Wilhelm Bendz (1804–1832), remembered for his many technically accomplished portraits of fellow artists such as Ditlev Blunck and Christen Christensen, a scene from the Academy's anatomy class, as well as the group portraits "A Tobacco Party" and "Artist in the Evening at Finck's Coffee House in Munich"; Constantin Hansen (1804–1880), deeply interested in literature and mythology and inspired by Niels Laurits Høyen, who developed national historical painting based on Norse mythology and painted many portraits, including the historical The Constitutional Assembly (Den grundlovgivende Rigsforsamling); Christen Købke (1810–48), influenced by Niels Laurits Høyen, an art historian who promoted a nationalistic approach calling for artists to search for subject matter in the folk life of their country instead of searching for themes in other countries such as Italy; Wilhelm Marstrand (1810–1873), a vastly productive artist who mastered a remarkable variety of genres, remembered especially for a number of his works which have become familiar signposts of Danish history and culture: scenes from the drawing-rooms and streets of Copenhagen during his younger days; the festivity and public life captured in Rome; the many representative portraits of citizens and innovators; even the monumentalist commissions for universities and the monarchy; and Martinus Rørbye (1803–1848), remembered for his genre paintings of Copenhagen, for his landscapes and for his architectural paintings, as well as for the many sketches he made during his travels to countries rarely explored at the time.
At the end of the period painting style, especially in landscape art, became caught up in the political issue of the Schleswig-Holstein Question, a vital matter for Danes, but notoriously impenetrable for most others in Europe.
Johan Thomas Lundbye, Christen Købke, P. C. Skovgaard, Dankvart Dreyer, Louis Gurlitt and Martinus Rørbye were among those who developed a new approach to the genre, concentrating on scenes from the Danish countryside.
[13] Bertel Thorvaldsen, strongly influenced by his lengthy stay in Rome from 1797, created many internationally recognized works in his pure Neoclassical style.
His breakthrough was Jason with the Golden Fleece which was highly praised by Antonio Canova and purchased by Thomas Hope, a wealthy British art collector.
Other contributors to sculpture in the Golden Age include Hermann Ernst Freund, whose work centred on Scandinavian gods, and Herman Wilhelm Bissen, who sculpted contemporary figures such as Landsoldaten (The Foot Soldier), a victory monument to the war of 1848–1851.
[14] During the Golden Age, Copenhagen in particular acquired a new look as architects inspired by neo-classicism repaired much of the damage caused by fire in 1795 and by the British bombardment of the city in 1807.
[15] Building on the experience of C. F. Harsdorff in the late 18th century, the main proponent of Classicism in the Golden age was Christian Frederik Hansen who developed a rather severe style with clean, simple forms and large, unbroken surfaces inspired by the architecture of ancient Greece and Rome.
In 1822, as a young man, he had experienced Karl Friedrich Schinkel's classicism in Germany and France and had met the German-born architect and archaeologist Franz Gau who introduced him to the colourful architecture of antiquity.
His uncle, Jonas Collin, who was an active art and culture official under Frederick VI, awakened the King's interest in a museum for Bertel Thorvaldsen, the Danish-Icelandic sculptor, and asked Bindesbøll to make some sketches for the building.
As Bindensbøll's designs stood out from those of other architects, he was given a commission to transform the Royal Carriage Depot and Theatre Scenery Painting Building into a museum.
Emulating the construction of the Erechtheion and the Parthenon as freestanding buildings released from the traditional urban plan of closed streets, he completed the work in 1848.
In the spirit of Romantic nationalism, he composed eight symphonies, a violin concerto, chamber music, organ and piano pieces and a number of large-scale cantatas, among them Elverskud, the most famous Danish work of its kind.
[26] One of the most important figures in Danish literary culture was N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783–1872) who instilled a growing spirit of nationalism based initially on his Northern Mythology (1808) and his long drama, The Fall of the Heroic Life in the North (1809).
But Andersen also wrote a number of travel sketches, several novels including the well-received: "The Improvisatore" (1835), a series of poems, and his autobiography "The Fairy Tale of My Life" (1855).
Much of Kierkegaard's philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives, focusing on the priority of concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment.
Opposing Hegelian philosophy, they promote the existential approach which raises the individual's awareness of God but intensifies his despair at not being able to achieve eternal truth.
One name stands out above all others among those who contributed to science during the Danish Golden Age, that of Hans Christian Ørsted, the prominent physicist and chemist known for observing that electric currents induce magnetic fields, an important aspect of electromagnetism.
Hans Christian Ørsted's scientific advances contributed fundamentally to chemistry, with his work on aluminium, and especially to physics, with his conclusive research on electromagnetism.
