Portrait of Adolphine Købke, Sister of the Artist

Købke dated this portrait to the day. Along the right edge, running vertically, he wrote his name and 19 June 1832. His sister Adolphine was then eleven, and he painted her more than once as she grew up. Here she sits against a dark ground with her hair parted in the middle, a white ruffled collar over a checked red and green dress, and a look the Louvre's catalogue calls a little sulky.

The next year the picture hung at the Copenhagen Academy, one of three portraits he showed there. Then it stayed in the family for more than 160 years, passing to the husband of an elder sister, then to Adolphine's own widower in Odense, and on down through nieces and great-nephews. The Louvre bought it from a Paris dealer in 1995.