Cows being Watered at a Village Pond. Brofelde, Zealand
Johan Thomas Lundbye
1844
During their summer outings, landscape painters would paint in a freer manner in their open-air studies compared to their large, carefully finished studio paintings. However, they had large-scale paintings in mind as they were painting out in the open. This can be clearly felt in this painting. The study is small, but the thoughts behind it are big. Lundbye carefully selected his position so that he could utilise the hilly shapes and undulating lines of the landscape to create a prominent reversed S shape that links up all the parts of the composition to form a uniform whole, leading our gaze out into the distance. He worked with lines in a manner completely different to that of Eckersberg and his students. Lundbye hoped to be encouraged to paint the motif on a large scale, but no such encouragement ever came, and he never executed the large version planned.
SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen · Image: SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Public domain · Text: SMK – National Gallery of Denmark (text: Kasper Monrad) (adapted), CC0