Johan Lundbye

Who was Johan Lundbye?

Johan Thomas Lundbye was a promising young Danish painter and graphic artist, known for his animal and landscape paintings who died at the age of 29. He was artistically inspired by Niels Laurits Høyen's call to develop a Danish nationalistic art by exploring as motif the characteristic landscapes, the historical buildings and monuments, and the simple, rural people of Denmark. He became one of his generation’s national romantic painters, along with P.C. Skovgaard and Lorenz Frølich, to regularly depict the landscape of Zealand.

He was born in Kalundborg to Joachim Theodor Lundbye and wife Catherine Bonnevie. He was sickly as a child. He studied privately under animal painter Christian Holm and at the age of 14 he came into J.L. Lund’s drawing school and the Royal Danish Academy of Art in Copenhagen, where he finished in 1842. He began exhibiting in 1835, and in 1839 his painting "Parti af Dyrehaven med Hjorte og Hinde" was purchased by N.L. Høyen's influential Art Union.

In the years to come he would focus his painting on depicting landscapes. His large "Kystparti ved Isefjord" was exhibited in 1843 and purchased by the Royal Painting Collection, now the Danish National Gallery.