A Summer's Day in the Jægersborg Deer Park, North of Copenhagen 1848

P.C. Skovgaard painted this large canvas of the Jægersborg Deer Park, north of Copenhagen, in the mid-19th century. It depicts a cultivated landscape, carefully managed for the pleasure of the Danish King and his court. Skovgaard’s image operates through visual codes, such as the framing of the central vista, the monumental trees, and the grazing deer that would have signified aristocratic privilege. It shows the rural landscape as tamed and idealized, a space of recreation rather than of agricultural labor. The Danish Golden Age, in which Skovgaard worked, saw artists turn to the local landscape in search of a specifically Danish identity, often in response to political pressures from abroad. To fully understand the image, we can consider the place of landscape painting within the Royal Academy, and trace how artists like Skovgaard defined their work in relation to national ideas of culture and identity.