Fritz Petzholdt

Fritz Petzholdt studied at Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Training under Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg is recorded. Eleonora Tscherning is recorded as having studied under Fritz Petzholdt. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are landscape. Places of work recorded in the authority are Copenhagen and Munich. Work by Fritz Petzholdt is recorded in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nivaagaard Museum, Ribe Kunstmuseum and Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek.

Fritz Petzholdt was born into a prosperous home on 1 January 1805 in Copenhagen to grocer Johan Jacob Petzholdt and his second wife Josephine Marie Elisabeth Petzholdt. After completing an apprenticeship as a house painter, he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1824 where he studied under Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, known as the father of the Golden Age of Danish Painting spanning the first half of the 19th century. He graduated in 1828 and already the following year sold a painting, En mose ved Høsterkøb med tørvearbejdere (A Bog at Høsterkøb), to the Royal Danish Painting Collection. Although he never won the Academy's gold medal, the traditional opening for Academy students to go abroad to further their studies since it was accompanied by a travel stipend, his family's wealth allowed him to travel to Harz the same year and then, in May 1830, to set out for Rome. On the way he visited Dresden, Prague, Nuremberg, Munich, Venice and Florence. In Rome he joined the Danish artists colony which had formed in the city with Bertel Thorvaldsen as its centre. He made excursions to the Roman countryside—to places such as Tivoli, Subiaco and Olevano—as well as longer trips south to Naples, Sicily and Corfu. In the winter of 1835/36 he returned to Copenhagen due to his father's illness and subsequent death. Shortly after the funeral, he returned to Italy with an extended stop in Munich on the way. From Italy he continued to Greece, a destination only Martinus Rørbye had visited before him among the Danish Golden Age painters. On 29 August 1838 he was found dead in his hotel room in Patras with his throat cut. Whether it was a case of suicide or murder was never settled.

• Illustration — A bog with peat cutters near Høsterkøb • Illustration — Italian Mountain Landscape with Overgrown Rock, probably near Olevano • Illustration — Watercolour of Raffael's studio in Villa Borghese's garden, Rome • Illustration — Landscape by the old vejl, 1835, Thorvaldsen Museum