landscape

PEDER MORK MONSTED, 1859 – 1941, was a danish landscape artist, well known for his romantic, poetic painting of nature. he depicted the grandeur and monumental aspect of the landscape, with a remarkable eye for detail and color. the entry on MONSTED in the Weilbach Dansk Kunstnerleksikon characterises the artist’s achievement – MONSTED’S great success was largely a consequence of his ability to develop a series of schematic types of landscape, which could each individually represent the quintessence of a scandinavian, italian, or most frequently danish landscape. in motifs, built up around still water, trees and forest, he specialised in portraying the sunlight between tree crowns and the network of trunks and branches of the underwood, the reflections on the water of forest and sky and snowladen winter landscape paintings with sensations of spring, often all together in the same painting.  insofar as MONSTED included figures in his paintings, these were principally used as ornaments with a view to emphasising the idyllic character of the motif; and only rarely were the figures and the anecdotal element given as prominent a role as in traditional genre paintings.

© peder mork monsted