The Democracy of Nature

The close connections between Danish art and politics in the 19th century were not limited to the period of the adoption of Denmark’s first democratic constitution and the story years that followed, up to the country’s defeat in the Second Schleswig War in 1864. From around 1800, landscape art became in many ways a mirror of the political situation in the country. The first half of the 19th century offers a wide range of artistic testimonies to the political inclinations and preferences in relation to landscape art. In the words of Jens Juel (1745–1802), C. W. Eckersberg (1783–1853), J. Th. Lundbye (1818-1848), P. C. Skovgaard (1817–1875) and Vilhelm Kyhn (1819-1903), we can make out the emerging contours of a new political and artistic agenda. This article focuses on a number of case studies from the Danish Golden Age that will be used to discuss the relationship between art and politics in this period