Et vandfald ved Liselund på Møn 1805

This colored print depicting a waterfall at Liselund on the island of Møn was made by Søren L. Lange around 1805. Prints like this one were part of a growing industry that catered to the leisure activities of the rising middle class in Denmark. Liselund was a romantic garden, a carefully designed natural landscape created by a French nobleman. This image presents nature as a spectacle, carefully arranged and safe for bourgeois consumption. The figures animate the scene, underlining its function as a place of recreation and polite social interaction. To understand this image fully, we can investigate the histories of landscape design, the growth of tourism, and the changing social functions of art in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. We can learn a lot about the social role of art when we look at these historical and institutional factors.