View of the Cloaca Maxima, Rome

1814

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg

Painter, Danish, 1783 - 1853

A person, tiny in scale, walks along a path between two grassy mounds that lead back to a band of brown buildings that span the width of this horizontal landscape painting. The grassy mounds are covered with frosty and spring green growth, with a few patches of ivory-white dirt. The person wears a brimmed, straw-yellow hat, a long-sleeved white shirt, knee-length brown pants over white stockings, and a red garment slung over one shoulder. He walks away from us toward a tunnel that runs alongside the right-hand mound, into the heart of the town beyond. The buildings are oatmeal brown, beige, or muted red, and have gray roofs. We can see into a few buildings closest to us. To our left, strokes of parchment brown suggest laundry hung across an open space inside one structure. Plants grow over the wide central arch of a partially ruined building beyond this, also to our left. Other buildings are stacked and staggered along the rolling hills into the distance. In the top third of the painting, thin white clouds float across a pale blue sky.

Media Options

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In 1803, at the age of 20, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg went to Copenhagen to study at the Royal Dutch Academy of Fine Arts. After a sojourn in Paris, where he studied with Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), and Rome, where he became part of a group of international artists engaged in the practice of plein air painting, he returned to the Royal Dutch Academy, first as professor and later director. Eckersberg is often referred to as the father of Danish painting for his influence on the generation of young artists who would come to be associated with the Golden Age of Danish painting during the first half of the 19th century.

Much of what we know about Eckersberg's working methods comes from the artist himself. In addition to the many letters he wrote from abroad, he authored two books on perspective and kept extensive personal diaries. During his stay in Rome, Eckersberg wrote of his work in a letter to his friend J. F. Clemens, "I intend to make a collection of the most beautiful of the many picturesque parts of Rome and the surrounding area. I have been working on them throughout the spring. I have already almost half a score of small sketches finished, all of which were completed on the spot after nature. I limit myself especially to architectural things." Painted in 1814, View of the Cloaca Maxima, Rome comes out of this experience of painting from direct observation. Although the artist himself refers to such paintings as sketches, the highly finished surface and meticulous brushwork of this painting suggests otherwise. Recent scientific examination has revealed extensive graphite drawing underneath the paint layer. Nevertheless, the painting conveys a feeling of immediacy, freshness, and sense of place typically associated with plein air practice.

Remarkable for its attention to detail and unusual viewpoint, the focus of View of the Cloaca Maxima, Rome seems to be on the architectural lines and their articulation of the pictoral space rather than on the famous buildings themselves. Landmarks are difficult to spot—the ancient Roman sewer system nestled beneath the hillsides in the center foreground, the Janus Arch to the left and the San Giorgio Church to the right in the middle ground, and the Campidoglio in the background. The tension created by Eckersberg's interest in linear perspective and nature study, a bridge of sorts between 18th- and 19th-century thought, is eased by the quiet Mediterranean light that bathes the scene.

Eckersberg exhibited this picture in 1828 as a pendant to his Panorama of Rome through Three Arches of the Colosseum (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen). Along with that famous work, View of the Cloaca Maxima, Rome is one of his true masterpieces of landscape painting.

On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 91


Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Victoria and Roger Sant

  • Dimensions

    overall: 31.8 x 47.4 cm (12 1/2 x 18 11/16 in.)
    framed: 46.7 x 62.2 x 5.1 cm (18 3/8 x 24 1/2 x 2 in.)

  • Accession

    2004.75.1


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1783-1853]; (his estate sale, Copenhagen, 1854, no. 21); Count F.R. Scheel, Ryegaard.[1] (sale, Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, 6 October 1998, no. 2001); private collection; (Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen); purchased 10 September 2004 by NGA.
[1] The buyer has not been firmly identified, but he may be the Danish politician Frederik Christian Rosenkrantz Scheel, 1833-1912, one of at least two family members with the same name.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1828

  • Fortegnelse over en Samling af Malerier, Tegninger og Kobbere, udstillet af Selskabet Kunstforeningen, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen, 1828, no. 158.

1895

  • C.W. Eckersbergs Malerier, Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen, 1895, no. 87.

1983

  • C.W. Eckersberg i Rom 1813-1816, Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen, 1983, no. 46.

2003

  • Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1783-1853, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2003-2004, no. 21, repro.

2015

  • Eckersberg: A Beautiful Life, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen; Hamburger Kunsthalle; Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris, 2015-2016, no. 28, repro.

2020

  • True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe, 1780–1870, National Gallery of Art, Washington; Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris; The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 2020 - 2022, no. 92, repro.

Bibliography

2004

  • Conisbee, Philip. "Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, A View of the Cloaca Maxima, Rome." Bulletin / National Gallery of Art, no. 32 (Fall 2004): 20-21, repro.

2006

  • Conisbee, Philip, and Franklin Kelly. "Small is Beautiful." National Gallery of Art Bulletin, no. 34 (Spring 2006): 2-17, fig. 3.

Wikidata ID

Q20183569


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