387. JENS PETER MØLLER (DANMARK, 1783-1854). Attributed to. “From the studio window at Charlottenborg down over the harbour in Copenhagen”.

Oil on canvas, 33 x 43 cm, including frame 48 x 58 cm.

PROVENANCE
The current owners are related to the artist, the painting has been inherited for several generations.

Jens Peter Møller was a Danish landscape painter and conservator. Although he belonged to another generation, at the end of his career he came to belong to the Golden Age, when he embraced the new style of painting of that time.

Møller was the son of potter Peder Larsen Møller and Jacobine née Due; born in Faaborg, but raised in Ekernförde in Slesvig by a relative, the customs officer Hansen. He became a painter's apprentice in Schleswig and then came to Copenhagen in 1803 simultaneously with C.W. Eckersberg, with whom he forged a lasting friendship. At the Kunstakademie he won the small silver medal and was first a pupil of Nicolai Abildgaard, later of C.A. Lorentzen, with whom he studied landscape painting. Prince Christian Frederik took care of him, and one of his first landscapes (1810) was part of Sorgenfri, where the prince himself was seen in the foreground with two ladies.

At the same time he had decided to learn to restore paintings, and it was in order to train himself in this that in 1810 he received a travel scholarship from the Fonden ad usus publicos, partly with the support of the prince. When conditions in Brussels did not satisfy him, he went to Paris, where he met Eckersberg again and lived with him until 1813, when he travelled to Rome and Møller came home not long afterwards.

In Paris he had partly studied his technical subject, partly made landscape studies from nature and by copying e.g. Claude Lorrain and Pijnacker. The Academy approved his submitted works, and after the award of a Zealand landscape, he then painted A part of Vordingborg overlooking Møen, for which in 1815 he became an academic member.

As early as 1814 he had been employed as a conservator at the Royal Danish Painting Collection and was for some years a drawing teacher for the naval cadets. From 1841 he also supervised the paintings at the royal castles. His inspection of much of the paintings in the collection was not always successful, because, whether due to his school or peculiar to himself, he painted too much on the pictures. However, in 1842 he received the Ingenio et arti medal for a difficult restoration of Queen Caroline Amalie's portrait. From 1834 he was also conservator (inspector) of Count Carl Moltke's painting collection.

As a landscape painter, he knew to find beautiful motifs both abroad, e.g. Tyrol and Switzerland, and at home, but his conventional treatment, especially of the foliage, often damaged the effect of a picture's beautiful lines and fine light. For Christiansborg Castle he painted four large landscapes from Switzerland and Tyrol, depicting the four times of day. The Statens Museum for Kunst owns eight paintings by him, of which Wetterhorn and Vejen ved Hammermøllen (now at Kronborg) are the most important.

Møller was a conscientious teacher of the younger landscape painters; he instituted monetary prizes at the Academy of Landscape Painting, and he surprised the time by perhaps being influenced in his older days by the younger landscape painters of the school who, under his guidance, had sought out the free nature, studying the peculiar moorland and dune landscapes of Jutland on his own, and with a freshness and naturalness in their depiction of the works of the time, which, according to his demand, he did not have to do in time.

In 1814, Møller had married his foster sister Anna Cathrine Margrethe Haase (born 1788). He held the title of professor and later councilor of justice (1845), was knighted by Dannebrog in 1829, Dannebrogsmann in 1840, and died in 1854.