Back in Copenhagen in the winter of 1822/23, the portrait scene was dominated by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg's sober, Neoclassical style, yet Jensen's more psychological portraits won immediate popularity. Up through the 1820s, he portrayed a large number of prominent members of Danish society but in spite of his commercial success he received little appreciation from art critics or from the establishment at the Academy and when a professorial chair became vacant after Christian August Lorentzen died in 1828 he was passed by.