Press release -
Eckersberg's Last View of Paris on the Market
At Bruun Rasmussen's Live Auction this spring, we turn our attention to the Danish Golden Age as Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg's rare and masterful view from Paris, The Aqueduct in Arcueil, is up for sale.
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg lived in Paris from 1810-13 – spending part of the time as a pupil of the famous French painter Jacques-Louis David. The three years would prove crucial to his artistic development, and he spent a good deal of his time in Paris finding new motifs in the city and its surrounding areas.
In the featured work from 1812, he depicts the aqueduct in Arcueil, located 5 km south of the city. Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg portrayed the place on a sunny day with people going about their business, and the impressive edifice of the aqueduct stands out through a dramatically composed perspective. The work also reveals other characteristic elements of Eckersberg's style, such as his focus on the light, colours and figures that all bring life to the motif.
Eckersberg only created four views while in Paris, two of which are today located at The National Gallery of Denmark and one at The David Collection.
"The Aqueduct in Arcueil is the only view from Paris left on the market. And it is not only a beautiful and a very rare painting – it is absolutely essential in the understanding of his development as a painter of views from cities,” says Head of Fine Art at Bruun Rasmussen, Julie Arendse Voss.
Eckersberg was one of the foremost painters of the Danish Golden Age. However, his importance to Danish art should not only be measured in the high quality of his own work. As a professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, his ideas resonated profoundly with a whole generation of painters, such as Christen Købke, J. Th. Lundbye, P.C. Skovgaard, Martinus Rørbye and many, many more. Eckersberg has since been given the title "the father of the Danish Golden Age of painting," and today he occupies a special place in Danish art history.
Live Auction: 25 February 4 pm, Bredgade 33, Copenhagen
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Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers is one of Scandinavia’s leading international auction houses, and one of Denmark’s oldest. It all started on 6 October 1948, when Arne Bruun Rasmussen conducted the first traditional auction in the saleroom at Bredgade 33 in Copenhagen. Today, Jesper Bruun Rasmussen stands at the helm of the family-run business together with the third generation of the family, his son Frederik and daughter Alexa, and the company’s CEO Jakob Dupont.
In 2004, the first online auction was launched, and today the auction house has expanded to include departments in Copenhagen and Aarhus and representations in Sweden, Germany, England, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Spain, Italy, Thailand and the US. About 100,000 lots are put up for auction each year at the traditional auctions, the daily online auctions and - the latest edition - direct auctions. Here you can bid on everything from art, antiques, modern design and jewellery to books, coins, stamps, wine and weaponry.
