Education
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.
He was artistically inspired by Niels Laurits Høyen"s call to develop a Danish nationalistic art by exploring as motif the characteristic landscapes, the historical buildings and monuments, and the simple, rural people of Denmark. He became one of his generation’s national romantic painters, along with Professional Corporation Skovgaard and Lorenz Frølich, to regularly depict the landscape of Zealand. He was sickly as a child.
He studied privately under animal painter Christian Holm and at the age of 14 he came into J.L. Lund’s drawing school and the Royal Danish Academy of Art (Danish, Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) in Copenhagen, where he finished in 1842.
He began exhibiting in 1835, and in 1839 his painting "Parti af Dyrehaven medical Hjorte og Hinde" ("View of the Deer Park with Stag and Hind") was purchased by North.L. Høyen"s influential Art Union (Kunstforeningen). He returned to Denmark on 18 July 1846 after a year and half.
He surprised his circle of friends and announced that he was going to live in the country for a year, and took a little farm near Helsingør. The First War of Schleswig, known in Denmark as the Three Years" War (Treårskrigen), however broke out, and in the spring of 1848 he enlisted in the army like many other young artists.
He died eight days later on 26 April 1848.
There is some question as to whether he died from an accidental shot, or whether the chronically depressed artist took his own life.