Oedipus and Antigone

Oedipus and Antigone (1812) is an interesting work in this connection. Encountering the artistic treasures of Paris proved an overwhelming experience for Eckersberg, who wrote in a letter home in November 1811 that he was suffering from an inferiority complex. A year later, he reported that he now felt like part of the city’s artistic life. Could Oedipus and Antigone have played an important part in restoring his self-confidence? The painting must have been one of his greatest challenges up until that point, especially when it came to creating a spatial effect in the composition through the interplay of light with strategically positioned image components. The high standard of the work shows that Eckersberg had reached a degree of maturity and fulfilled much of his potential even before setting foot in David’s studio.

From Paris, Eckersberg’s journey took him to Rome, where he stayed for more than three years before returning to Copenhagen. In Rome, he developed his art further, as can be clearly seen in his famous views of the city and its surroundings. As well as these, he produced a small number of figure paintings, of which Una Ciociara (from Ciociaria, a district near Rome), painted in 1816, was the last. The very high technical standard of this work encapsulates Eckersberg’s development as an artist while in Italy. The creation of this piece was unusually well documented. Eckersberg’s diary tell us that he took great pains in composing his image of the Roman girl. For instance, he rented the model’s costume for two weeks. After his return to Copenhagen, the painting was significant because he used it for teaching purposes and made his students copy it.

Back in Copenhagen, Eckersberg became a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1818. The following year, he received his most prestigious commission to date: painting portraits of King Frederik VI and the royal family. The first part of the job was to paint the king’s portrait in profile. The resulting depiction was adopted as official and reproduced many times by Eckersberg himself and by copyists. Nationalmuseum’s version, dating from 1820, is believed to be the second in Eckersberg’s own series. This version was commissioned by the king as a gift to José Maria O’Neill, an Irish merchant who served as Danish consul general in Lisbon. In his diary, Eckersberg frequently mentions Rasmus Borch, an art collector who commissioned a number of works, including a portrait of his daughter Karen Margrethe Borch.

This portrait is special in various ways: it is almost full-figure, and an illusionistic frame surrounds the motif. There is another similar work by Eckersberg with a painted frame: a nude, now in the Louvre, that was sold by the artist to the same Rasmus Borch. Like the latter work and other nudes by Eckersberg, the portrait features a delicate, classically cool depiction of skin; in other words, the fusion of reality and ideal pursued by Eckersberg throughout his life. As a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Eckersberg occupied an apartment in Charlottenborg Palace in Copenhagen. Nationalmuseum’s recently acquired drawing depicts three of