De to huse og frugttræet 1880

Carl Bloch created this print titled "Two Houses and a Fruit Tree" in Denmark at some point during his lifetime, using etching on paper. Bloch was one of the leading artists of the Danish Golden Age, a period of intense artistic and intellectual ferment in the first half of the 19th century. While he is perhaps best known for his religious paintings, he also produced landscapes and genre scenes that offer a glimpse into Danish life at the time. This etching seems on the surface to be a charming, intimate, and even sentimental portrayal of the Danish countryside. But, by carefully examining the details of the composition and taking into consideration the context in which it was made, we can see how Bloch was working within a long tradition of landscape painting that served the ideological project of constructing a cohesive national identity. To understand the social and institutional forces at play in this artwork, we can delve into art criticism of the time, the exhibition histories, and collections, as well as looking at the artist’s personal history.