View of Copenhagen at Sunset

Martinus Rørbye created the oil painting View of Copenhagen at Sunset in 1847. The work, executed on canvas, measures 285 cm in height and 230 cm in width. It is currently held in the collection of the Statens Museum for Kunst.

The painting has been featured in the exhibition From Golden Age to Cobra: 150 years of Danish Art.

View of Copenhagen at Sunset is held by the Statens Museum for Kunst, the Danish national art museum, as part of its permanent collection. The painting's association with this institution is documented in its Wikidata record, which lists both the collection and location as the Statens Museum for Kunst. The work was featured in the exhibition "From Golden Age to Cobra: 150 Years of Danish Art," a survey tracing the development of Danish artistic production across a century and a half.

No specific accession number is recorded in the available sources.

View of Copenhagen at Sunset (1847) was exhibited in 1984 at Statens Museum for Kunst as part of the survey From Golden Age to Cobra: 150 years of Danish Art, situating Rørbye’s nocturne within a broader arc of Danish modernism rather than confining it to the Golden Age canon. The work’s subdued palette and atmospheric handling of light reflect Rørbye’s engagement with plein-air practice and a growing interest in ephemeral effects, aligning with contemporaneous European trends in landscape painting.

Scholarly treatments emphasize Rørbye’s role as a transitional figure between classical Danish landscape and later naturalist currents, though the painting remains less discussed than his more iconic genre scenes. Its presence in the 1984 exhibition underscores a reevaluation of Rørbye’s oeuvre beyond the national frame, linking his Copenhagen nocturnes to wider nineteenth-century European landscape traditions.

View of Copenhagen at Sunset (1847) contributed to the development of Danish nocturnal landscapes through its atmospheric treatment of light and urban ambience. Its inclusion in From Golden Age to Cobra highlighted its transitional significance between Romantic tradition and modernist experimentation. The work remains part of the Statens Museum for Kunst collection and continues to inform studies of 19th-century Danish painting.

Completed in 1847, this oil painting captures Copenhagen at dusk, presenting a cityscape framed by a stone ledge in the foreground. Two church spires dominate the composition, rising behind a sky heavy with swirling clouds that transition from cool gray to warm orange and pink near the horizon. The work belongs to the collection of Denmark’s National Gallery, Statens Museum for Kunst.