View of Sommerspiret, the Cliffs of Mon Jigsaw Puzzle

Oil on canvas painting by Georg Emil Libert In the first half of the nineteenth century, Denmark experienced an artistic "Golden Age". Following the Napoleonic Wars, the small, peninsular kingdom suffered English naval aggression, the dissolution of its partnership with Norway, and increasing hostility with Germany. As modern Denmark emerged as a constitutional monarchy, artists sought a unifying and stabilizing identity for the nation. Inspired by German romantic nationalism, best represented by the mesmerizing meditations on landscape of Caspar David Friedrich, Danish artists produced meticulous images in crystalline light of their native countryside. In the colors and contours of the Danish landscape, they sought to define a distinctly national spirit. Georg Emil Libert was trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where Friedrich himself had studied. Like Friedrich, Libert specialized in landscape painting. Here, he pictures the white chalk cliffs of the island of Mø