Exhibited: The Nivaagaard Collection, “Venskabsportrætter fra Rom”, 2016, Cat. No. 41, mentioned p. 61, ill. p. 61.

Provenance: Circolo Scandinavo / Skandinavisk Forening i Rom (inv. No. AI 22).

Louis Gurlitt was one of several young artists from Schleswig-Holstein who in the 1880s moved to Copenhagen to study at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Here, he was a student of Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg (1783–1853), and it was also here that he met Wilhelm Marstrand (1810–1873), with whom he developed a close friendship during his time at the Academy.

After graduating, Gurlitt travelled with Marstrand to Norway in 1835, where he practiced painting the Norwegian landscape. It was actually the landscape and nature that he had been encouraged to focus on during his studies under Eckersberg, and later in his artistic practice - together with his artist colleagues Johan Thomas Lundbye (1818–1848) and Peter Christian Skovgaard (1817–1875) - he was one of the pioneers of the Danish National-Romantic landscape painting.

Gurlitt and Marstrand met again in Rome during an extended stay Gurlitt had in Italy from 1842–46. He had left Denmark in the wake of the increased political dispute between Denmark and Prussia. On a stay on the Italian island Ischia, their friendship turned into a professional collaboration as well, with Gurlitt painting the landscape background for some of Marstrand's Italian folk life motifs. It is therefore not suprising that Marstrand made this extremely detailed picture of the friend while they were both living in Rome in 1846.