13 Facts About Dankvart Dreyer

Dankvart Dreyer was a Danish landscape painter of the Copenhagen School of painters who was educated under the guidance of Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg.

Dankvart Dreyer was talented and successful, winning several awards before he turned 21.

Dankvart Dreyer met a group of fellow Academy students who were studying landscape painting, still a relatively unappreciated discipline at the Academy.

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Dankvart Dreyer never went abroad to further his studies, although he applied for travel scholarships on three occasions.

Dankvart Dreyer was the first to paint the gentle landscapes along the east coast or the moors of central Jutland.

Dankvart Dreyer first visited the east coast around Aarhus in 1838 and later that year he was present when Blicher arranged his first National Awakening Meeting at Himmelbjerget.

Dankvart Dreyer went on to paint the heath and, when he returned in 1843, he went all the way to the west coast.

Lundbye, Sjovgaard and Dankvart Dreyer had for years preferred Danish subjects and became the leading proponents of the emerging era of National Romantic painting.

However, as time progressed, Dankvart Dreyer increasingly turned his back on what was considered good taste by Copenhagen's artistic establishment.

Symptomatically, Lundbye and Skovgaard often attended Grundtvig's sermons while Dankvart Dreyer preferred to read Blicher.

Dankvart Dreyer presented a rougher, less sophisticated, image of the Danish countryside; one which was more dramatic and more natural.

Dankvart Dreyer, whose reserved and introvert nature had been observed by Jerichau during his childhood, stopped exhibiting at the annual Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition and increasingly withdrew from Copenhagen's art scene.

Dankvart Dreyer never stopped painting but he made no further efforts to exhibit.