Udsigt mod en have med store træer og sandstensvaser. ( Nysø have?) 1865

Curator: This delicate pencil drawing from 1865 is by P.C. Skovgaard. The work is titled, "Udsigt mod en have med store træer og sandstensvaser (Nysø have?)" which translates to "View towards a garden with large trees and sandstone vases. (Nysø garden?)." It’s currently part of the collection at the Statens Museum for Kunst. Editor: Oh, it feels like peering into someone’s dreamy memory. Kind of washed out, distant, yet so serene. Like a ghost of a beautiful place, waiting to be remembered more fully. Curator: Skovgaard was deeply invested in the Danish landscape, seeing it as inextricably linked to national identity and the burgeoning Romantic nationalism of the period. What is depicted here could represent a real place—the question mark in the title does imply some ambiguity, which offers an opening to broader consideration. Editor: Ambiguity is what sells it for me, personally! Those sandstone vases and the implied architecture kind of hint at wealth, but also at how nature, with those looming trees, quietly dwarfs human effort, no? Curator: Precisely. The drawing presents an intriguing tension. On one hand, you have a formal, designed garden—a space traditionally associated with control and privilege. But then, as you noted, these wilder, more imposing trees take center stage, hinting at something beyond mere human dominion. How do you interpret the role of class within landscapes in the artwork? Editor: I hadn't considered this so deeply until you said it, but perhaps it critiques how bourgeois society orders the natural world. I also feel there's an awareness about Skovgaard of his own place as an artist, able to observe but perhaps not fully inhabit that privileged world represented here, especially with the somewhat ephemeral quality he gave the picture by employing minimal mark making. Curator: It does ask us to consider not just what’s visible, but also what’s implied, who has access, and on whose terms? What a lovely meditation on man and nature... Editor: ... and what a sneaky, beautiful, invitation to a secret, forgotten garden of our own!