En ko med rygvendt hyrde 1821

Christian Holm made this print called ‘En ko med rygvendt hyrde’ - ‘A cow with a shepherd facing away’ - sometime in the first half of the 19th century. It is now held at the SMK - Statens Museum for Kunst. The image has a deliberately old-fashioned feel, evoking the landscapes of earlier artists. It's unlikely that Holm was interested in making social commentary. Rather, he places himself in a longer artistic tradition, referencing older landscapes and, perhaps, earlier modes of social organisation. As a historian, I would be interested in understanding the visual codes that Holm is drawing on. What did images of rural life mean to audiences in the 19th century? Were they understood as conservative or progressive? By looking at the institutional histories of museums and art schools, we can start to understand how artists were taught to understand their relationship to the past.