A Sloop with Passengers Sailing before the Wind

In 1831 the Copenhagen Art Society, the Kunstforeningen, bought this canvas directly from Eckersberg. The society bought pictures in order to raffle them among its members, and the winning ticket for this one belonged to Theodor Herman Jütting, a Dutch-born merchant and consul who lived in Elsinore. His family kept it for almost 90 years.

In 1919 a group of Danish art lovers, led by Karl Madsen, director of the national gallery in Copenhagen, bought it from the Jütting estate and gave it to the Louvre as a thank-you. During the war France had seized another Eckersberg, his portrait of the two eldest Nathanson daughters, along with the property of its German owner, and had just released it to Copenhagen.

The view is taken near Kalvehave on Zealand, looking across to the island of Møn. The sloop's name, Lykkens Prøve, roughly Fortune's Test, is painted on her stern, and her skipper raises his hat to whoever is looking.