对镜梳发的裸女

In 1833 Eckersberg did something unusual for a Danish academy. As a professor at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen, he introduced the study of the living female nude for his students, and this small painting from the late summer of 1841 grew directly out of one of those sessions. The model's name is known. She was called Florentine, and she posed from June into September of that year, with this particular pose worked up between early August and mid-September. Several of Eckersberg's pupils painted her from the same setup at the same time, and two of their versions still survive alongside his. The scene is quiet and matter-of-fact, a woman seen from behind arranging her hair at a mirror, with the clear northern light that Danish painters of this generation prized. It hangs in the Hirschsprung Collection and is often named among the finest works of the Danish Golden Age.