Johan Thomas Lundbye

Landscape. Sørup Vang

In the motif from Sørup Vang the irregular lines of the landscape, the irregularities of perspective and the wide or oblong fields of light and shade that arise as a result of the forms of the landscape have caught the painter’s interest. The picture reminds us that Lundbye was not under the influence of Eckersberg’s strict, systematic rules for the construction of space with linear perspective, but placed the emphasis on the distinctiveness of the landscape. The road that winds to the right in the painting is almost a fixed element in Lundbye’s landscapes. The road was a highly meaningful motif for him, and in the diary he kept from 1842 until 1844 he constantly used the word vej (“road” or “way”) as a metaphor for everything that had to do with a process or a development. He used the word both of his work as an artist and in general about the stages of life, and as a rule he found the road difficult to follow, both in the course of his artistic career and in his attempts to come to terms with himself in the ethical sense.