LAURITS ANDERSEN RING
1854 Naestved – 1933 Sankt Jørgensbjerg

THE FARMYARD

oil on canvas, 32 x 40 cm
signed and dated lower left: LA Ring 86

date: 1886

provenance:

private collection, Denmark;

Auction 1312, Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, 19 March 2013, lot 23;

private collection, Denmark;

online sale; Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, 11 August 2025, lot 25.

The painting will be included in the forthcoming Catalogue Raisonné of L. A. Ring’s works under preparation by Gitte Ditlevsen.

The Farmyard underscores the importance of the farmstead and rural homestead in Ring’s artistic development. Rather than depicting an idealized pastoral scene, the work offers a restrained and unsentimental view of rural life. Ring employs distinctive compositional devices—such as marginal placement of forms, a raised horizon line, and an emphasis on stillness—to create a sense of psychological tension. The rural environment is thus framed not as folklore, but as an existential landscape shaped by labor, hardship, and silence.

While drawing on the Danish tradition of folk art Ring also absorbed modern impulses from French painters including Jean-François Millet and Jean-François Raffaëlli. In his farm and landscape paintings of the 1880s, realism and symbolism merge into a distinctive visual language. The visible countryside becomes a carrier of mood, inner experience, and social critique. In these seemingly modest motifs, Ring’s mature artistic identity begins to crystallize—rooted in origin, shaped by political consciousness, and deeply attuned to the human condition.

By the early twentieth century, Ring had achieved wide recognition, yet he deliberately chose a life removed from urban artistic circles. In 1913, he built a house in the small hamlet of Sankt Jørgensbjerg, reaffirming his preference for rural surroundings and close-knit communities. There, he worked closely from his immediate environment, frequently painting outdoors and depicting the people and landscapes around him. He repeatedly addressed themes of peasant life and traditional rural activities at a moment when this way of life was beginning to fade as a result of industrialization. His scenes of unembellished rural life, as well as his landscapes, are imbued with a distinctly melancholic tone.

Ring experienced his artistic breakthrough during the last decade of the nineteenth century, when his work began to attract both national and international attention. His paintings were exhibited widely and received significant recognition and awards. Notably, Ring was among the Danish artists represented at the influential Scandinavian Art Exhibition in America (1912–13), an event that played a key role in introducing Nordic art to an international audience and consolidating his reputation beyond Denmark.