Kronborg 1904

Albert Gottschalk painted Kronborg with oils, we don’t know when. But can you just feel that grayness? The artist seems to have squished and coaxed the paint across the surface, searching for something that shimmers between form and feeling. I can imagine Gottschalk squinting, trying to capture the castle, the trees, the sky—all those infinite shades of gray. Look at how the brushstrokes build up the forms, thick in some places, almost scraped away in others. It's like he's wrestling with the materiality of paint itself. He's finding the architecture within the landscape, the landscape within the architecture. That one stroke there, cutting through the trees, feels so charged, like a bolt of energy connecting earth and sky. This piece has a kinship with other landscape painters, people like Courbet, maybe? Artists who weren't afraid to get their hands dirty, who saw painting as an act of embodied expression. It feels like the artist is in conversation with all of art history, riffing on themes, pushing boundaries. The painting is full of ambiguity and uncertainty, offering space for multiple interpretations.