Gustav HOLMBOM

(Copenhagen(?) 1859 - Copenhagen(?) 1946)

Roskilde Fjord

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Oil on board.
Signed with a monogram and dated 18. GH. 94, drawn with the end of the brush, at the lower left.
131 x 515 mm. (5 1/8 x 20 1/4 in.)
Painted in 1894, this oil sketch depicts a view of Roskilde Fjord, west of Copenhagen on the Danish island of Zealand. At the southern end of the long fjord is the town of Roskilde, the ancient capital of Denmark, a leading trading port and, until the 15th century and the rise of Copenhagen, the most important city in the kingdom. Itself a branch of the Isefjord, Roskilde Fjord is forty kilometres in length, and is dotted with several small islands. Around 1000 AD the inhabitants of Roskilde sunk several of their ships at Skuldelev, about halfway up Roskilde Fjord, to prevent Vikings from sailing down the fjord and raiding the town.



Another view of Roskilde Fjord by Holmbom, dated two years later in 1896, is today in the collection of the Bornholms Kunstmuseum in Gudhjem, on the Baltic island of Bornholm in Denmark.







Very little is known of the Danish landscape artist Gustav Holmbom (or Holmboe), who painted mainly landscapes in and around Copenhagen and elsewhere in Denmark. Among his subjects were views at Amager Island in the Øresund, the sound between Denmark and Sweden, as well as landcsapes at Lyngby lake and the forest park of Dyrehaven, north of Copenhagen and along the Suså river, southwest of the city, as well as at Vejle Fjord on the Jutland peninsula.

Gustav HOLMBOM

Roskilde Fjord