The Tower of the Winds, the Acropolis, with figures in traditional Greek costume( )
One of the foremost artists of the Danish Golden Age, RÝrbye grew up in the family of a Danish official in Drammen, Norway. His father was a storehouse manager and later a senior war commissary, until the family moved to Denmark after the cession of Norway to the Swedish Crown. He was admitted to the Academy under C. A. Lorentzert, under whose tutelage he won both classes of silver medal and, after several attempts, the minor gold medal. From 1825 he studied privately under Eckersberg; the two men were to form such a close association that in 1832 his protégé joined the Freemasons under Eckersbergs sponsorship. RÝrbye exhibited at Charlottenborg almost every year between 1824 and 1848, and in 1849 his widow showed twelve of his paintings there. RÝrbye was known as an inveterate traveller and in 1830 and 1832 he explored the Norwegian countryside. On his first grand tour, made between 1834 and 1837, he travelled to Paris then on to Rome, Sicily, Greece (noting his visit to this scene and the production of a sketch in February and March 1836), Turkey and back to Rome. While in Paris he studied French contemporary art, writing extensively on the subject to Eckersberg. He was particularly impressed by the exotic oriental subjects of Horace Vernet and also admired Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa but expressed his dislike of the work of Eugène Delacroix. RÝrbye wrote that he felt like turning away in distaste from Delacroix’s early masterpiece, The Massacre at Chios, referring to the painting’s ‘distortion of nature and the display of its darkest side. He (Delacroix) is currently one of the first of the so-called romantics, striving to bring French art back to the level from which David and the others sought to elevate it.’ RÝrbye was surprisingly sceptical about the abilities of Jean-Auguste-s successor. 1 very much doubt that he is, at this moment, the right man to hold art on its correct course.’ (Danish Painting. The Golden age, 1984, p. 179). After Paris, RÝrbye travelled to Rome, to Sicily and then, with the architect Gottlieb BindesbÝll, to Athens and Constantinople. Later in life, he undertook many more journeys including ones to Italy in 1839-41 and to Sweden in 1844. That same year RÝrbye was appointed Professor at the Model School at the Copenhagen Academy. RÝrbye was essentially a painter of genre subjects and architecture following Eckersberg’s example. His pictures were factual, but displayed a uniquely sympathetic view of the people he painted. He also painted a few portraits and landscapes, the latter often inspired by Dahl and, to a certain extent, by Caspar David Friedrich. The Tower of the Winds, also called the HOROLOGIUM, Greek HOROLOGION (“Timepiece”), in Athens was erected about 100-50 BC by Andronicus of Cyrrhus for measuring time. Still standing, it is an octagonal marble structure, 42 feet high and 26 feet in diameter. The building’s eight sides, which face points of the compass, are decorated with a frieze of figures in relief representing the winds; below it, on the sides facing the sun, are the lines of a sundial. The Horologium was surmounted by a weathervane in the form of a bronze Triton and contained a water clock (clepsydra) to record the time when the sun was not shining. Here figures in contemporary Greek costume are seen going about their daily business, apparently oblivious of the extraordinary significance of this great monument.
Provenance: War commisar Albeck; J. B. Sandberg to 1871; C. Albeck; Emilie Kirks 1944; Private Collection, Copenhagen 1999.
Literature: Herman Madsen, 200 danske malere og deres vaerker, vol I, 1946, p 99, fig 5; Herman Madsen, Kunst I privat eje, bind I, 1944, np 301; Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen, 1981, catalogue by Dyveke Helsted, Eva Henschen, Bjarne Jorrixs and Torben Melander;
Exhibited: Royal Danish Academy, Charlottenborg, 1839, no 274; KÝbt af Kunstforeningen 1905, no 12; Martinus RÝrbye 1803-1848, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen, 1981, no 158, catalogue by Dyveke Helsted, Eva Henschen, Bjarne Jorrixs and Torben Melander