The exhibition in the Sunley Room of the National Gallery is a small one, featuring just 48 of Købke's works – but then Købke was never a particularly prolific artist, nor one of great renown. By all accounts, he led a quiet and modest life which – with the exception of a trip to Italy – was rooted in and around Copenhagen, and was happiest painting the people and places he knew best (or where, in the words of the audioguide, 'bonds of love and affection tied him to his chosen motifs'). Not that his style was in any way simple or naïf; Købke's 'sophisticated handling of composition, colour and, above all, light' would, after all, subsequently distinguish him as one of the greatest painters of the Danish Golden Age.
It is Købke's 'View of Dosseringen near the Sortedam Lake looking towards Nørrebro' (pictured above) which the critics rightly alight on as one of his most arresting works, and which, for me, embodies the quiet – almost meditative – charm of Købke's art. Painted just before he departed for Italy, it depicts a 'low-key, underplayed narrative' of leave-taking or arrival, bathed in a 'static, poetic light'. There is a sense of enigma about it. 'We see no faces, read no emotions, barely sense the body language of the participants,' comments the audioguide, 'but the simplest things are rendered beautiful: the soft, radiant light; the fragile shape of the little jetty; and the humble vegetation on the banks, painted with botanical accuracy'.
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