Following yesterday's enforced domesticity
an antidote was needed.
What better than a dose of pure clear Danish air?
So Maddy and I,
poised as we are on the jetty of Life
watching as the last of our young row off into the distance,
went to the Christen Købke exhibition,
and gazed compassionately at this portrait
of his mother.
Her slight frown, stoical gaze, and clamped lips
capturing the expression of a woman
who had brought eleven children into the world
and no doubt waved farewell eleven times too.
This cheerful and confident sloucher
was his friend the landscape painter,
Frederick Hansen Sødring.
They shared a studio.
I wonder if their mothers were friends.
Frederiksborg Palace in the Evening Light
was a tranquil place to linger.
Christen died of pneumonia aged 37.
His father had died two years earlier,
but of his mother we heard no more.
Beautiful ! The portrait of his mother is particularly fine .
ReplyDeleteI'm now really envious . I'll have to hope that it's still on the next time I'm in London .
Sonata .
What a great antidote to seeking out bad smells in the fridge! The artist's mother looks like a woman who would never have tolerated a bad smell.....
ReplyDeleteThanks! This is perfect!
ReplyDelete