Portrait of the Danish brewer J. C. Jacobsen, founder of the Carlsberg breweries.

August Jerndorff's portrait of J.C. Jacobsen — founder of the Carlsberg Brewery and one of Denmark's most influential cultural patrons — captures a man who did as much as any individual to shape Danish cultural life in the second half of the nineteenth century. Jacobsen founded the Ny Carlsberg Foundation (later the Glyptotek), supporting Danish and international art on a massive scale. A portrait for the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle was a semi-official commission: Jacobsen was recognized as belonging to Denmark's national honor gallery. Jerndorff, a leading Danish portrait painter, was an appropriate choice for this important subject.

The portrait balances bourgeois dignity with the hint of an industrialist's practical energy. Jacobsen's face is given careful physiognomic attention — strong, direct, accustomed to authority. The handling is competent and respectful: the painter serving the sitter's public significance rather than pursuing his own painterly ambitions.