Det gør ikke noget at være født i Andegaarden , naar man kun har ligget i et Svaneæg 1928

Fritz Syberg made this pen drawing, whose title translates to "It doesn't matter being born in a duck yard, if you have only lain in a swan's egg," sometime between 1880 and 1939. He kept company with a group of Funen artists interested in modernizing Danish painting, and this drawing has some modern touches. It certainly has a foot in older forms of illustration. We might see a fairy tale depicted here, especially since the title alludes to Hans Christian Andersen. A swan floating on a body of water is pictured next to an inscription from the artist himself. It's important to consider this work within the context of Danish cultural history and national identity formation. Andersen's fairy tales were extremely popular at the time, and Syberg is likely to have been interested in the way these stories can both reflect and shape people's worldview. To understand the drawing further, it would be valuable to investigate the extent to which Syberg was involved with the Danish cultural institutions of his time and how the social discourse of that period might have influenced his art.