Danish Golden Age Painting

The Danish Golden Age played an important role in art and especially in painting. Even though things for Denmark were not going great - bankruptcy, fires in Copenhagen - but when looking at the paintings from that period you would have never guessed there were so many problems, especially when it is called the "Golden Age".

Artists during the Golden  Age started to pay more attention to the natural landscape when it came to paintings. The subjects starting to change focus from people to the landscape behind the people. One famous painter during the Golden Age was P.S. Kroyer. He painted several larger pieces that have very few people in the foreground. The natural surroundings in his paintings showed the summer time in Denmark with the bright moon in Sommeraften ved Skagens Strand and the sandy beach in Sommerdag ved Skagens Sønderstrand. 

Pieces like that by Kroyer show that most artists painted Denmark exactly how they saw it during summer/fall which made Denmark known for bright, beautiful summer days. This notion is true, but these paintings may not capture the entirety of Denmark's weather and country as a whole. So many Golden Age paintings show the beautiful beaches or green fields, which continues to let viewers picture themselves in the Danish greenspaces. Golden Age landscapes may have been realistic, but viewers were never disappointed.