A special double portrait by Christen Købke

Købke often painted his own intimate surroundings, including the local area around the Citadel in Copenhagen and his family and friends. The various children of his family were among his favourite subjects, and in 1845 he painted his son and niece. The two children stand arm in arm as Cecilie, who was eight at the time, reads to the four-year-old Peter. Cecilie was the daughter of Købke’s sister, Conradine Feilberg, and the girl stayed temporarily with her grandparents in Copenhagen during her mother’s confinement, giving birth to another child. In one of his letters to his sister, Købke said: ‘There is a heartfelt friendship between your Cicilie and my Peter’, and the close relationship between the cousins served as a poignant reflection of the intimacy between Købke and his sister. The tender care displayed by the girl for her younger cousin provides an image of this earnest friendship, accentuated here by their close physical proximity.

The first half of the nineteenth century saw great and widespread interest in the innocence of childhood and in children’s naïve approach to the world, and Købke’s painting inscribes itself in this  fascination. The work also has a kinship with the museum’s other portraits of children done during this period, including Portrait of C.F. Holm’s children (1832) by Købke’s teacher at the art academy,  C.W. Eckersberg (1783–1853). This work too presents children engrossed in reading a book. Children’s literature became increasingly popular during the Golden Age, and physical proximity centred on a book was a widely used subject in portraits of children during this time.   

The painting os acquired with support from the New Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish Agency of Culture and Palaces. The work allows the museum to present a key aspect of Købke’s production that has not previously been represented at the museum: children’s portraits.