MURA · THE COLLECTION · L.A. RING

A Walk by the Sea

A Walk by the Sea is an oil painting by L.A. Ring from 1898, held by the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) in Copenhagen under the title Lady at Karrebæksminde Beach, Zealand. It measures 46 by 65 cm, is signed "LARing 98" at lower left, and has been in the museum's collection since 1937 as inventory number KMS4136.

L.A. Ring · 1898 · Oil on canvas · Danish painting · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

The museum's title names the place: Karrebæksminde on the coast of Zealand. Mura's catalogue entry describes a woman walking along an empty beach, her pale dress set against deep blue waves. Ring had a personal connection to the place. He married Sigrid Kähler, daughter of the ceramic artist Herman Kähler, in 1896, and Wikipedia lists Karrebæksminde as the place where the couple lived after the marriage.

SMK's biography of Ring notes that water, too, belongs to his recurring motif of the road: brooks, rivers, estuaries and open sea, alongside lanes and field paths. These "ways" lead the gaze into and out of the picture, and the museum reads them as images of human existence rather than only as topography.

How it was painted

The picture is oil on canvas, painted two years after Ring's marriage and dated by the signature to 1898. The museum's biographical text describes his approach as a precise, unsentimental registration of what he saw, in deliberate contrast to the anecdotal rural painting that sold well in the city. It also stresses his unusual cropping and pointed composition, features that give even a simple scene an extra charge.

Where it went

SMK acquired the painting in 1937 and catalogued it as KMS4136. It has travelled widely since: the museum's record lists Nordiske stemninger at Blaafarveværket in Norway (2003), Fra Guldalder til Cobra in Tromsø (2005), SMK's own retrospective L.A. Ring - på kanten af verden (2006-07), Tales from Denmark at the Ateneum in Helsinki (2007-08), Ordrupgaard's Mellem lys og mørke (2016-17), and the touring show On the Edge of the World at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle and the Bruce Museum in Connecticut (2019-20). More recently it was shown in På stranden at Den Hirschsprungske Samling (2025-26), and the record lists a loan to Till havet! at Nationalmuseum in Stockholm from September 2026 to February 2027. The picture is therefore not on view at SMK at the moment.

Why it is in Mura

The painting sits in Mura's Nordic Light collection with the mood serene: an empty beach, a single figure and the sea, held in a calm balance.