Inspired by the current pandemic, the article examines to what degree the 1853 cholera epidemic in Denmark, both mentally and physically, may be inscribed as an essential prerequisite for the withdrawal to a harmonious, almost Arcadian, sense of communion with nature that can be observed in Danish art after 1853. A narrative about a shift in mentality and art history, one about how Danish art, in the period 1848–1864, addresses and records a sense of loss, which is more fundamental and existential in nature than the political narrative of defeat. Alongside this political history of defeat, we also find another and less well-known story of loss. The political history of nineteenth-century Denmark is largely a story of defeat and despondency.
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