Rooms intimate and lofty, personal and public - two paintings by Johan Vilhelm Gertner

 

A bedroom in Bernstorff Palace near Copenhagen, circa 1845.

Built in the middle of the eighteenth century for Danish foreign minister Count Johann Hartwig Ernst von Bernstorff, by 1842 the building had fallen into neglect and was about to be demolished when King Christian VIII of Denmark purchased it and ordered a complete renovation. Gertner painted the king on several occasions, so one might assume that some degree of familiarity led to the artist being given the opportunity to portray such a private space.

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Thorvaldsen's Studio in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen, 1836.

The studio in question was that of the celebrated Danish neo-classical sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. He was considered one of the greatest sculptors of his time, regarded as the successor of Antonio Canova. Mainly resident in Italy - he maintained a large workshop in Rome - he made a final triumphant return to Denmark in 1838, only six years before his death at the age of seventy-three.