The motif became known throughout Denmark when the large stamp exhibition “Hafnia” took place in 1976. The motif “Coupled horses outside Lindenborg Inn” were used for a miniature sheet of postage stamps, made especially for this exhibition (see illustration).

Due to an extensive detective work many of the portrayed persons in the painting have been identified. The name of the mail-coach driver was Lars Chr. Larsen, and he was serving the private regular service Skibby-Holbæk and Roskilde-Kalundborg. The man on the horse was Peder Gølnitz (or Gylsnæs). The man with the white apron standing next to the doorway was identified as Lars Jensen, who was such a hardworking man, that he was able to buy back his ancestral farm. The man with the pipe standing in the doorway was the innkeeper Ernst Godfred Jørgensen. The young girl was his daughter Maren. The white horse was military trained and is therefore used to the sound of the horn, whereas the other horses became frightened.

A larger version of this painting was bought by the Royal Family in 1878. That painting is deposited at Statens Museum for Kunst (the Danish National Gallery) by the present owner, Axel count of Rosenborg. Otte Bache was appointed professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen shortly after he had finished the large version of the painting.

Provenance: The collection of the American Ambassador Edward Elson and his wife Susie Elson.