View Outside the North Gate of the Citadel

View Outside the North Gate of the Citadel (fig. 1), by Christen Købke (1810—1848) has become a central work of the Danish Golden Age. The triumph of this painting seems perhaps unlikely, for its painter, who was only active for a period of ten years, was not especially celebrated in his lifetime, and was characterised by his biographer, Emil Hannover, as naïve and unimaginative.[^1] He was, Hannover relates, “by nature, quite without the ability to construct anything, he himself had not seen…he became empty and barren as soon as he closed his eyes”.[^2] Far from disqualifying Købke from greatness, this lack of imagination comes to be understood, as the art historian David Jackson makes explicit, as an unimpeachable “frankness” of gaze.[^3] As View Outside the North Gate of the Citadel reveals, this holds the key to Købke’s embodiment of the Danish Golden Age.