Christian Albrecht Jensen

Christian Albrecht Jensen
Christian Albrecht Jensen, Self-portrait from 1836
Born	(1792-06-26)26 June 1792 Bredstedt, Duchy of Schleswig
Died	13 July 1870(1870-07-13) (aged 78) Copenhagen, Denmark
Nationality	Danish
Education	Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts
Known for	Painting
Movement	Danish Golden Age

Christian Albrecht Jensen (26 June 1792 – 13 July 1870) was a Danish portrait painter who was active during the Golden Age of Danish Painting in the first half of the 19th century. Painting more than 400 portraits over the course of his career, he depicted most of the leading figures of the Danish Golden Age, including the writer Hans Christian Andersen, the painter Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, the physicist Hans Christian Ørsted and the theologian N. F. S. Grundtvig.

Although Jensen experienced considerable commercial success, he received little official appreciation from the artistic establishment of his day. In particular, the art historian and critic Niels Lauritz Høyen criticized his style, finding his paintings 'unfinished'.

Jensen was born at Bredstedt in Nordfriesland. From 1810 to 1816, he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen where he studied under Christian August Lorentzen. From 1817 to 1818, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden.

In 1818, he traveled to Rome by way of Vienna, Venice, Bologna and Florence. When he arrived, he joined the large colony of Danish-German artists' who lived in the city at the time and also met the sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen.

During his years in Rome, Jensen painted small, informal portraits of many of his fellow artists, including the writer Bernhard Severin Ingemann who visited Rome from 1818 to 1819, and the sculptor Hermann Ernst Freund, Thorvaldsen's closest associate from 1818 to 1828.