Skitse. Kølvand 1900 - 1905

Curator: Immediately, I'm struck by a feeling of motion, chaos almost. It feels turbulent. Editor: We’re looking at “Sketch. Wake” by Niels Larsen Stevns, created sometime between 1900 and 1905. It's currently held here at the SMK, Statens Museum for Kunst. The piece is done with pencil and charcoal on paper. Curator: "Wake" certainly suits it. Are we to imagine a boat, perhaps? I can see the impressionistic swirls and the lines that evoke ripples in the water. But the central image seems…troubled. Editor: Given the period, the sketch comes from a time when artists were questioning the role of nature in an increasingly industrialized society. Sketches like these would have allowed the artist to engage directly with the changing landscape. This kind of rapid mark-making wasn’t necessarily intended for public display, but captures the experience of place. Curator: Absolutely. And notice how Stevns uses those dense charcoal lines in the center to create an almost impenetrable darkness. It seems less about rendering a landscape and more about expressing an inner state. Editor: Many artists were exploring spiritual and psychological depths around this time, and landscapes often became vessels for projecting those internal experiences. There is that movement away from realism toward something that more symbolically resonant. Curator: Which invites us to consider: what does a churning wake signify? Loss? Disruption? The passing of time and old ways of life? Or perhaps simply a raw encounter with an overpowering natural world? It has me contemplating what Stevns truly wished to impart. Editor: Well, from a historical vantage point, I think this piece represents an essential transitional period, revealing anxieties around modernization and offering us a more profound appreciation for the psychological depth of turn-of-the-century landscape art. It is now much more than representation of natural landscape but expression of the self in relation to it. Curator: It does seem to capture something fundamental about how we navigate those uncertain waters – both then and now.