Christen Købke

Christen Købke spent much of his short life painting what was within walking distance of his front door. His father was head baker at the Kastellet, the star-shaped military citadel in Copenhagen, and the family lived inside its ramparts. Købke painted its gates, its moats, and the ordinary people around them with a quiet, exact attention.

He trained under Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, the teacher at the heart of the Danish Golden Age, who drilled his students in close observation of nature. On a stay at Frederiksborg Castle north of the city, Købke made large views from its roof for his parents' house, treating a famous royal building as something to be seen plainly in its own light.

He died of pneumonia in 1848, only 37, and had sold little in his lifetime. Recognition came long after, when later generations came to count him among the finest Danish painters of his century. His pictures are gathered today mainly at the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen.