Detail of Copenhagen Harbor by Moonlight by Dahl in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, July 2011

Copenhagen Harbor by Moonlight,1846

Object Details

Artist: Johan Christian Dahl (Norwegian, Bergen 1788–1857 Dresden)

Date: 1846

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 37 3/4 x 60 5/8 in. (95.9 x 154 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of Christen Sveaas, in celebration of the Museum's 150th Anniversary, 2019

Accession Number: 2019.167.2


Since the early nineteenth-century, the waterfront ship and lumber yard depicted in this view has been known as Larsens Plads, or Larsen’s Place, after its founder, Lars Larsen. Dahl first painted this prospect in 1816 (Kurpfälzisches Museum, Heidelberg), but in reprising it for the present work he doubled the size of the canvas, omitting incidental details and heightening its atmospheric effect. This placid scene, conceived as the pendant to a far wilder, natural one, Tyrolean Landscape with a Waterfall (1823; private collection), remained unsold at the artist’s death.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/439343