MURA · THE COLLECTION · L.A. RING

After Sunset

After Sunset is a large oil painting by L.A. Ring from 1899, in the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) in Copenhagen. It measures 158 by 235 cm, is signed "L A Ring 99", was acquired by the museum in January 2007, and carries the inventory number KMS8484.

L.A. Ring · 1899 · Oil on canvas · Danish painting · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

SMK's catalogue text, written by Henrik Holm, describes the scene: night is falling on a landscape with a church and tall pine trees, and at first sight it seems a naturalistic depiction of the moment when the last light of day gives nature a new tint. But beneath the churchyard wall skeletons emerge. The landscape, in the museum's reading, is not only an outer phenomenon; it also stands for our own nature, passions and fears.

The museum's biography of Ring mentions the same motif among the very few works in which his symbolism comes plainly to the surface: pictures where death is conjured as a skeleton figure in the night sky, or, as here, under the wall of Melby churchyard.

How it was painted

Holm's text places the painting between two movements. Pure landscape painting, he writes, was the province of conservative and right-wing circles, while Ring's own politics leaned left. Realism wanted to show spectators the real lives of ordinary people, with illness, poverty and suffering; Symbolism took reality as a starting point that could be transformed in a purely subjective way. After Sunset occupies a station between the outer and inner world. The work is oil on canvas and dated by its signature to 1899. It appears as number 417 in H. Chr. Christensen's 1910 list of Ring's paintings and studies from 1880 to 1910.

Where it went

SMK records the acquisition date as 2 January 2007, shortly after the painting had been included in the museum's retrospective L.A. Ring - på kanten af verden (SMK 2006-07, then Randers Kunstmuseum). It has since been lent to Kunstnerbrødre: L.A. Ring og H.A. Brendekilde (Randers, Brandts in Odense and Nivaagaard, 2018-20) and to L.A. Ring - Årstiderne (Ribe Kunstmuseum, Fuglsang Kunstmuseum and Øregaard Museum, 2022-23). The inventory number is KMS8484. According to the record the painting is not currently on display.

Why it is in Mura

After Sunset belongs to Mura's Nordic Light collection, filed under the mood quiet: the last light of the day over a still northern landscape.