Sailing Vessels at Wilders Plads, Copenhagen

Sailing Vessels at Wilders Plads, Copenhagen

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On August 17, 1830, Eckersberg noted in his diary that he had finished a painting of a ship unloading its cargo and drying its sails. This drawing, showing men loading barrels, served as a point of departure for the painting in question. Wilders Plads, or square, is located in Christianshavn, across the harbor from where Eckersberg lived. At right in the composition are warehouses where the cargo must have been offloaded.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Sailing Vessels at Wilders Plads, CopenhagenSailing Vessels at Wilders Plads, CopenhagenSailing Vessels at Wilders Plads, CopenhagenSailing Vessels at Wilders Plads, CopenhagenSailing Vessels at Wilders Plads, Copenhagen

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.