Biography

Danish landscape painter. He spent some time living in Norway with his parents before studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen beginning in 1825. There he initially studied under Jens Peter Møller (1783-1854), but his greatest influence was from Johan Christian Dahl. For his debut at Charlottenborg in 1828 Sødring presented two copies after Dahl, and in the years that followed the Norwegian painter's views on art and artistic principles came to be of crucial importance to Sødring's own work.

Between 1829 and 1831 he traveled to Norway and Germany, taking time to study in Munich. Upon his return, he exhibited landscapes from the Rhine, Southern Germany, and Tyrol. In 1832, he was painted by Christen Købke; the portrait is now part of the Hirschsprung Collection.

In 1842 Sødring wed Henriette Marie de Bang (1809-1855) who belonged to a rich landowner family in Nastved. With the marriage he received a sizable dowry. He established a scholarship, to be awarded at the annual Charlottenborg Exhibition, and provided funds to support elderly landscape artists and widows of such painters.

Sødring was among the few Danish artists of his period who looked towards the Dresden school of Romantic landscape painting from the very outset.