Plates of this period show the heavy style that had descended on the factory. Deep gold bands enclose a circular picture, painted in a warm brown colour by Garmein about 1820-1825. They are mainly topographical in character. A plate painted by Jensen is signed with his initial, together with the three blue lines as a factory mark (illustrated, p. [189]). It is a fine flower-subject in natural colours, representing primula, blue flowers, and daffodil. The border is richly gilded and has three distinct patterns; it evidently has been used as an experimental piece. It is now in the Museum at the royal factory. There are other plates painted in colours by L. Lyngbe, in 1831 and 1833 respectively, bearing his initial L. They are decorated in rich gilding by Brandstrup. One represents Söroe (with title on medallion), the Eton of Denmark. The other is of Prince's Palace, Christiansborg, Copenhagen.
The Thorvaldsen Period.—In 1867 the factory came under the control of A. Falck, and the director Holm, although not capable of raising the artistic output to its old level, introduced a new feature in a number of biscuit figures after Thorvaldsen, the great Danish sculptor.
We reproduce the well-known figure of the god Mercury, as indicating the beauty of these productions. Interesting as they are, and undoubtedly possessing great delicacy as replicas of masterpieces of another art, the decadent note is still present in denoting that the modellers had to seek inspiration elsewhere. It is pleasurable to be able to collect a miniature gallery of Thorvaldsen's work in porcelain, but the potting and modelling of them added nothing to the creative faculty of the artists at the factory.
The only productions of importance now conducted were an occasional jubilee or presentation vase made from Hetch's old moulds, decorated with a view of some villa or some edifice associated with the person who ordered the vase. They were usually covered with lilac or purple ground and profusely gilded.
The flame had not gone out, but it was flickering fitfully, and the artistic impulses in painting, and the poetry that had never died in Denmark, were stirring to kindle the fire into renewed life.
Since Höyen, the historian, delivered his lecture in 1844 On the Conditions for the Development of a National Scandinavian Art, artists had turned homewards. There was the national spirit of the northern people, the peasants and the fisher-folk, to make the Danish genre picture. There was nothing northern to be found in Rome. Eckersberg had indicated the way, and with the study of man came the study of nature. Johann Thomas Lunbye, with his cattle and his forest landscapes, caught the somnolent air of cattle before Troyon had set the fashion in France. Peter Christian Skovgaad interpreted the spiritual beauty of the Danish beech-woods; his favourite light was the cold pale day of the northern sky with its sober blue. Kroyer, with his Skagen Fishers at Sunset, and his Fishermen setting out by Night, surrounds the Dansk Folke with mystery and poetry.
To these days belong the rejuvenation of Danish art, and what the painter was doing on his canvas the ceramic artist was shortly to do on his vase and on his placque. The dawn of the Renaissance was at hand.