Skystudie. En solnedgangshimmel 1841 - 1847

Curator: This watercolor by Martinus Rørbye, "Skystudie. En solnedgangshimmel" – or "Sky Study. A Sunset Sky" – dates from between 1841 and 1847. It's a drawing, likely executed en plein air, and currently resides here at the SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark. Editor: It’s absolutely dreamy. It’s almost pure mood – wispy purple and pink clouds clinging to the sunset. It’s making me want to chase after a beautiful, fleeting moment. Like a memory fading into abstraction. Curator: Rørbye was a key figure in the Danish Golden Age, deeply influenced by Romanticism. We often see in his works an interest in capturing fleeting atmospheric effects and a kind of idealized vision of the natural world. Editor: Idealized is the word. I’m wondering, looking at it, was this painted in one shot, or over a few days? It's like a record of a whole feeling, the lingering end of day... The sky is like an emotional seismograph, recording the vibrations of the artist. Curator: The quickness of watercolor makes it very well-suited to the en plein air style. Artists in the nineteenth century really embraced working outside to record the real world with perceived accuracy, to grapple with modern life and also grapple with their positionality in space and time. Editor: Well, that "perceived accuracy" feels kind of funny here, though, because it does feel emotionally real, but those colors! Purple and pink, that is. It's almost unreal. I want to believe he's amplifying things a bit. It's just so darn pretty! Curator: Perhaps the subjective response is exactly the point, no? These sky studies served, and continue to serve, as an interesting testament to individual observations that coalesce in the historical record, too. Editor: That’s a nice thought – one person’s sunset becoming a small but meaningful part of history, shifting my view of the day as the sky slowly lightens as I ride off on my bicycle. Curator: Indeed, perhaps capturing just a sliver of the cultural imagination is legacy enough.