SMK – National Gallery of Denmark

Why it is renowned

SMK holds European paintings by Mantegna, Cranach, Titian, Rubens and Rembrandt, and early French modernism by Matisse, Picasso, Derain and Braque, among them Matisse's Portrait of Madame Matisse (The Green Line) of 1905.¹² Its print room, the Royal Collection of Graphic Art, keeps more than 240,000 works on paper; its beginnings go back to King Christian II, to whom Albrecht Dürer gave a set of his prints in 1521.² It owns the world's largest collections of works by Christen Købke and Vilhelm Hammershøi, and the Danish Golden Age of painting, 1800 to 1864, is a focal point of the collection.¹ Lonely Planet counts it among the best museums in Copenhagen, for a collection of Danish and European art from the 14th century to today and for its old building joined by a glass street to the new one.³

The story

The collection began in the art chamber of the Danish kings; around 1750 Frederick V bought Italian, Dutch, Flemish and German paintings on the advice of its keeper, Gerhard Morell.² The royal picture gallery hung in Christiansborg Palace until the fire of 1884, and the present building by Vilhelm Dahlerup and G. E. W. Møller opened in 1896.² The engineer Johannes Rump gave his French modernist paintings in 1927.¹ A later extension by C. F. Møller's architects is joined to the old building by a glass sculpture street along the Østre Anlæg park.²

What to know it by

• Portrait of Madame Matisse (The Green Line)²1905Henri MatisseFrom the Rump collection
• Christ as the Suffering Redeemer²Andrea MantegnaBought for the royal collection around 1750
• The Royal Collection of Graphic Art²More than 240,000 prints and drawings
• Danish and Nordic Art 1750–1900²400 works in 24 galleries, Eckersberg to Hammershøi