Details
LAURITS ANDERSEN RING (DANISH, 1854-1933)
I Høst, Tehusene
signed and dated 'LA.Ring/85' (lower left)
oil on canvas
1312 x 1112 in. (34.5 x 29.5 cm.)
Provenance
Frederik Wolff or Herman Swanberg.
(Possibly) Anonymous sale; V. Winkel & Magnussen, Copenhagen, April 1913, lot. 69.
(Possibly) Anonymous sale; V. Winkel & Magnussen, Copenhagen, 20 May 1947, lot 32.
Private collection, Denmark.
Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 18 March 1994, lot 75.
Acquired at the above sale by a private collector, Denmark.
Thence by descent to the present owner.
Literature
(Possibly) H. C. Christensen, Fortegnelse, L. A. Ring, Copenhagen, 1910, no. 834.
Special notice
Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.
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Lot Essay

Laurits Anderson Ring’s father earned a living as a farm labourer. The artist would return to these origins in his realist depictions of rural life in Denmark. Ring had fostered his interest in harvest subjects around Denmark in the early 1880’s: in Ludby in 1882 and in Rågelund in 1884. Ring used his brother, Ole Peter Anderson, as the model for the harvester in the present picture, and would use his farm in Tehusene as the setting. Ring would return to this composition in various preparatory drawings, pastel and oil studies around 1885-86. He would use swift, bold and impressionistic brush strokes to create a sense of movement as the scythe is swung and the harvest is collected. This work is a reduction of the very large work which Ring prepared for the 1885 exhibition as the first of his series of large-scale works and which is now in the collection of the SMK, Copenhagen. As Miriam Have Watts observes of the larger version, "Ring reshaped the harvester to eradicate his personal features along with his half-turned face. The movement of his stout, elongated arms is transplanted into the circle described by the scythe as the implement makes its steady way into the stalks. The hue of ripe corn rests evenly over the scene, and the lines emanating from the body at work become almost ornamental" (Harvest in P.N. Larsen, L.A. Ring On the Edge of the World, Copenhagen, 2006p.222). A version of a similar size to this work was gifted to the Danish State in 1954.

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