MURA · THE COLLECTION · L.A. RING

A Village in Winter

A Village in Winter is an oil painting by the Danish painter L.A. Ring, dated 1906 and catalogued by the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) in Copenhagen under the title A Sealand Village. Winter. It measures 63 by 95.5 cm, entered the museum's collection the year it was painted, and carries the inventory number KMS1942.

L.A. Ring · 1906 · Oil on canvas · Danish painting · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

The museum's title tells you the essentials: a village on Zealand, seen in winter. The catalogue entry for the picture in Mura describes yellow village houses and bare branches bringing a little warmth to a snow-covered road. The painting is signed and dated at lower right, "LA Ring 1906".

Ring came from the countryside, and SMK's biography of him says he never forgot it. He took his surname in 1881 from the village of Ring in southern Zealand where he was born on 15 August 1854, and made rural life and the cultivated land around the village the dominant theme of his art. The same biography singles out the road as one of the leading motifs in his work: lanes, field paths and highways that lead the eye into the picture and out of it again, and that the museum reads not only literally but as images of the course of a human life.

How it was painted

The work is oil on canvas. SMK's biographical text describes Ring's method as a precise, almost positivist registration of the village and its surroundings, combined with unexpected cropping and a refined sense of composition that gives his pictures a dimension beyond what is shown. It places him in the Danish landscape tradition of Lundbye and Kyhn, and compares him in stature to Vilhelm Hammershøi. Where Ring was living in 1906 is not stated in the object record; Wikipedia lists Karrebæksminde and Baldersbrønde near Hedehusene among his homes after his marriage to Sigrid Kähler in 1896, before he settled at Sankt Jørgensbjerg in Roskilde for his final decade.

Where it went

SMK records the acquisition date as 1906, the same year the painting was made. The inventory number is KMS1942. The museum lists one recent exhibition, Sol og Sjæl: Vitalisme og symbolisme fra SMKs samling, held at SMK from April to September 2019. According to the record the painting is not currently on display.

Why it is in Mura

The painting belongs to Mura's Nordic Light collection, where its mood is filed as wintry: a snow-covered road and yellow houses that hold a little warmth against the cold.