Denmark’s Golden Age was a moment of intense productivity in the creative arts in the first half of the 19th century, one that heralded a whole new era in the fields of painting, literature, architecture and music for the Scandinavian country.
Artists like Christen Købke and Martinus Rørbye, authors like Hans Christian Andersen and philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard all came to the fore during the early 19th century, the peak of Denmark’s cultural impact on the planet.
It was a period that came out of decades of instability and uncertainty in Denmark; out of a dearth came a blossoming, a whole new landscape, a new age. To walk around Copenhagen’s Statens Museum for Kunst, its version of the National Gallery, is to see a country that had confidence, a purpose, a role in the world. It ended, as all epochs do, as boom turned into bust with territorial wars with the upstart Prussian Empire, but while it lasted, times were good.
One thing that this Golden Age was missing was women, it being the early
