"Sager som ere Husvilde endnu. 7 april 45" 1845

Curator: Today we’re looking at "Sager som ere Husvilde endnu. 7 april 45", which roughly translates to “Things That Are Still Homeless. April 7, 1845." This drawing on paper, created with ink, is by Johan Thomas Lundbye. It's currently housed at the SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark. Editor: My first impression? It feels…almost bureaucratic. Not in a bad way, but the handwriting gives the sense of record-keeping or a personal inventory. Curator: That’s perceptive. Lundbye, associated with Romanticism, created this during a turbulent period. Consider the socio-political climate: Denmark was grappling with national identity, facing pressures from rising German nationalism and internal conflicts over governance. Editor: And those details feed into the materiality. Ink and paper were readily available means, allowing for intimate, almost secretive, acts of documentation. What strikes me is the sheer accumulation of names – the "Løvings Portrait" and "Skorgaards Portrait" sections feel very deliberate. Were these commissions? Did it turn into an itemized accounting of sitters for various projects? Curator: Precisely. These aren't just names, but social connections, networks of patronage, potential patrons and his musings – all integral to an artist attempting to make a career within specific societal structures and power dynamics. Notice how neatly they are recorded, it’s as if each is a commodity. Editor: Right, there's labor and potential material gain embedded into this little sketch. But, too, you get the other items noted-- "theater," "six chairs," seemingly mundane entries mixed among these portraits, all lending a texture to the narrative. The phrase from the title continues to haunt my reading. Curator: That phrase gets at the heart of it – "Things That Are Still Homeless." We can view this not only in terms of tangible dispossession or displacement but also the intangible realms of ideas and identities in flux, perhaps reflecting his anxiety about national identity? Or even art making’s place? Lundbye captures, in miniature, this tension and uncertainty through this very personal work. Editor: For me, the charm is in that raw process, exposing labor and production within an artwork of memory and feeling, something vital in our discussions about art’s purpose today. Curator: Agreed, the small scale and intimate quality forces us to reflect upon bigger things about society, gender and place that speaks volumes about its purpose.