Dankvart Dreyer

Dankvart Dreyer (13 June 1816 – 4 November 1852) was a Danish landscape painter of the Copenhagen School of painters who was educated under the guidance of Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg. Around 1840, he was part of the emerging National Romantic landscape painting scene in Denmark but as a result of his over-dramatic and excessively natural style, he did not fit the aesthetics and the ideology of the period. After being widely criticized, he turned his back on the artistic establishment and passed into near oblivion. In 1852, when only 36 years old, he died from typhus.

Posthumously, half a century after his death, his reputation was restored, prompted by the art historian Karl Madsen, and today he is considered to be one of the leading Danish landscape painters of his day, the peer of his more famous contemporaries P. C. Skovgaard and Johan Lundbye.

Early life and education As the youngest of 15 children, Dankvart Dreyer was born on 13 June 1816 in Assens on the Danish island of Funen. His parents were Jørgen Christian Dreyer, a successful merchant who had been the richest man in town until the national bankruptcy in 1813, and his third wife Caroline Dorthea (née Møller). Dankvart soon showed a gift for drawing. Another boy in Assens at that time, born the same year as Dankvart, was Jens Adolf Jerichau, who also was to become a prominent artist. He later commented on young Dreyer's remarkable gifts and dedication: "While I was fooling around with the other boys, he would be sitting at home with his mother and sister drawing, and you can hardly imagine anyone with a greater disposition for art than that boy."

Dreyer's godfather therefore saw to it that in 1831, at the age of 15, the boy was sent to Copenhagen to study at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Under the supervision of his professors, J. L. Lund and Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, he trained to become a history painter, the most prestigious artistic discipline at that time, and also painted some portraits. He was talented and successful, winning several awards before he turned 21.

Turn to landscaping Dreyer also had private lessons with Christen Købke, another professor at the Academy. He also met a group of fellow Academy students who were studying landscape painting, still a relatively unappreciated discipline at the Academy. Among them were P. C. Skovgaard and Johan Lundbye who became his close friends and inspired him to take still more interest in landscaping. Alone or together with them, he made frequent excursions to the countryside north of Copenhagen, particularly the area around Fredensborg and Jægersborg Dyrehave. There he made detailed sketches and studies of nature.

Painting the other Denmark

Funen and Brandsø

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Dreyer never went abroad to further his studies, although he applied for travel scholarships on three occasions. Instead, he travelled widely in Denmark. His native island of Funen remained a focal point for his artistic attention throughout his career, particularly the area around Assens where he had grown up. A place of particular importance to him was the small manor house of Rugaard which he visited almost every summer from 1837 to 1847 to paint. This did not bother Dreyer who had been struck by the short stories of Steen Steensen Blicher, a distant relative of his. Blicher's descriptions of the stark beauty of the vast, brown-colored heaths of mid Jutland, of its people and almost exotic dialects, had a mesmerizing effect on the painter. Dreyer first visited the east coast around Aarhus in 1838 and later that year he was present when Blicher arranged his first National Awakening Meeting at Himmelbjerget. He went on to paint the heath and, when he returned in 1843, he went all the way to the west coast.

The emerging National Romantic landscape era

In the years around 1840, the influential art historian and critic Niels Laurits Høyen campaigned for nationalistic art, reflecting a tendency which was seen all over Europe. In Denmark, people enthusiastically read Bernhard Severin Ingemann's historic novels and Adam Oehlenschläger while N. F. S. Grundtvig's sermons were drawing large crowds. According to Høyen, painters, too, should contribute to this national awakening. Instead of turning to the Mediterranean area, its landscapes and its people, and to classical mythology, for inspiration, they should paint what defined their native Denmark: the Danish landscape and its people, Danish history, and Norse mythology.