It has been announced that the National Gallery have acquired Road in the Village of Baldersbrønde (Winter Day) by Laurits Andersen Ring.
It is the first painting by the Danish artist to enter a UK public collection and will introduced the nation to an artist who helped to push Modernist painting in an unexpected direction.
This acquisition is an important addition to the gallery’s ever expanding collection of Scandinavian paintings, revealing the continued inventiveness and influence of the Nordic tradition.
Director of the National Gallery, Gabriele Finaldi said: “Ring superbly captures the moody silence of a cold winter’s day in his home village of Baldersbrønde near Copenhagen. The painting has been acquired thanks to the generosity of several benefactors and it joins the small but choice collection of Scandinavian painting on show in Trafalgar Square.”
Laurits Anderson Ring is considered to be one of the foremost Danish painters at the turn of the 20th century and remains today as a pioneer in Danish art of analytical realism.
In his work, Ring addressed themes of traditional rural life at the very moment that this way of life was beginning to fade away. He was also fascinated by the way in which architecture and nature conspire to shape the rural experience.
The painting itself has never been seen in Denmark. Ring painted it for the famous Scandinavian Art Exhibition that toured America in 1912 and 1913, where it was exhibited under the title Winter Day, sending it to America immediately upon completion. It remained there until its rediscovery in 2014.
Christopher Riopelle, National Gallery curator of post-1800 European paintings said “Ring is one of the most distinctive Danish artists working in the years around 1900, widely admired in his homeland for his technically precise and deeply emotive landscapes and scenes of rural life. We at the National Gallery are pleased to be able to help to introduce him to a new public.”
The painting was purchased for £68,000 with the support of Mr David Leslie Medd OBE , Mr & Mrs Charles Booth-Clibborn, Sir Michael & Lady Heller, Mr Daniel Katz and other donors.
Visitors can now see the painting on display in Gallery E, alongside early nineteenth century Nordic landscapes including Balke, Dahl and Købke, thus linking Ring with his closest Scandinavian contemporaries in the long standing tradition of the Nordic landscape.