P. C. Skovgaard
More advantageous to him, he felt, were the time he spent learning craft painting; the time he spent visiting the Danish Royal Painting Collection, now the National Museum of Art and studying the classical Dutch landscapes in their collection; the outdoors studies he did with friends Christian Gotfred Rump, J. Th.
Lundbye, Thorald Læssøe, Dankvart Dreyer and Lorens Frølich; and the many evenings he spent with other young artists at sculptor and Academy professor Herman Ernst Freunds' fashionable house.
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Academy professor, former Director and long-standing rival of Lund, although not Skovgaard's teacher, played an influential role by encouraging and arranging field studies for Academy students to paint outdoors, including to Jægersborg Dyrehave, an area which Skovgaard featured several times in his mature work.
With the attention and encouragement of such highly regarded contemporaries as Niels Lauritz Høyen, art critic, historian and Academy professor whom he admired, and Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, noted archaeologist and museum administrator, Skovgaard got the nerve to focus his career goals on art, and turn away from craft painting.
And with this focus he became recognised for his talents in truthfully and ideally depicting the nature of Denmark, based on careful study and on artistic and technical skills and training.
This work distinguishes itself clearly from those landscapes painted by his contemporaries both by the harsh wildness of the subject matter, and by its dark moodiness.
That same year he exhibited at Charlottenborg and received the established art world's recognition by winning the Neuhausen prize (Neuhausenske Præmie) for the painting Det gamle Egetræ med Storkereden i Nordskoven ved Jægerspris (The Old Oak Tree with Stork Nest in the North Forest near Jægerspris), which also came into the Danish Royal Painting Collection.
Instead of seeking a travel stipend from the Academy, Skovgaard chose to follow his friend Høyen's advice and continue to develop his craft in Denmark using Danish landscapes as his subject matter.
In the years to follow he traveled around in northern Sjælland every summer to do studies, which he then reworked as large paintings in his studio every winter.
After 1850 he developed a monumental form of expression that held great importance for the following generation of artists.
He produced several paintings based on this trip, including two views of Venice, a Roman landscape and a portrait of Høyen preparing to meet the Pope.
In 1869 he returned to Italy together with Marstrand under an award from the Ancker Fund (Anckerske Legat), and painted several Italian landscapes.
That same year he painted En Skovsø, Sommeraften (A Forest Lake, Summer Evening) and in 1874 En Sommerdag i Dyrehaven; et Tordenvejr er trukket forbi og Solen atter kommen frem (A Summer Day in Dyrehave; a Thunderstorm has Passed and the Sun Comes Out Again), two paintings considered among his most important and harmonious works.
Skovgaard is primarily known for his landscape paintings, and for the special role he played in portraying Denmark's nature; not the spectacular but the ordinary and typical.
He mastered both the smaller formats with realistic, impasto depictions of nature and bigger, monumental and detailed compositions.
His art production and academic career had a large influence on landscape painting's future in Denmark.
She is primarily known for her embroideries, many of which were based on drawings by the leading artists of the day, including Lundbye, Constantin Hansen as well as her husband.
