Skystudie 1836 - 1839

Curator: It’s ethereal, isn’t it? Almost like a forgotten dream. Editor: It is quite understated, in a way. Christen Købke created this graphite and pencil drawing, "Skystudie," sometime between 1836 and 1839. You can currently find it here at the SMK. It feels almost like a whispered observation, a fleeting moment captured. Curator: Whispered is a perfect word! I think of clouds as representing potential, change, transformation—the sky being such a potent symbol cross-culturally. Seeing it rendered so lightly... there is also this linear mark going almost diagonally, what does it mean to you? Editor: That delicate stroke, slicing through the clouds… it is interesting, because it does add a certain… violence, or a sense of time unfolding very rapidly. I cannot but help find in this drawing visual parallels to a comet—a fleeting celestial object—a powerful image found across different cultures from Europe to Asia where they announce periods of either grave challenge, or regeneration. The artist made it quite the prominent element here, one wonders about it. Curator: The sky itself as a portent. Well, that resonates deeply when you consider the romanticism prevalent during Købke’s time. There was this huge emphasis on the sublime, that sort of awesome power of nature. To represent this cosmic phenomenon—even this tentatively—into such intimacy, that´s what strikes me! Editor: And that blend is quite interesting. A scientific interest with meteorological phenomena but seen through a subjective lens—clouds representing this transitional moment that is both temporal but that in this drawing is set in permanence. I think that it´s so easy, even today, to relate with this emotional interpretation of nature, even through what seems like a mundane fragment. Curator: Absolutely. Even in its simplicity, it reflects back to something greater that one carries within, a memory or dream that fades in an instance like vapor but has a lingering permanence to it. Editor: Well, a lot like memory itself—ethereal. So, with just a few graphite marks on a page, Købke unlocks all that in us. Beautiful, isn't it?