MURA · THE COLLECTION · L.A. RING

Thaw

Thaw (Danish: Tøbrud) is an oil painting by L.A. Ring from 1901, in the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) in Copenhagen. It is inscribed "L.A. Ring 1901" at lower right, entered the museum in 1995, and carries the inventory number KMS7709. It is catalogued as a landscape painting.

L.A. Ring · 1901 · Oil on canvas · Danish painting · story written 25 September 2026

What you are looking at

Wikidata records the subjects of the picture as a fence and snow. Mura's catalogue entry describes melting snow opening pale fields beyond the dark rhythm of a wooden fence. Beyond this the sources consulted give no further description, and none names the place where the scene was painted.

The motif is characteristic of the painter. Ring was born on 15 August 1854 in the village of Ring near Næstved, from which he took his surname in 1881, and he spent his career on the cultivated land and villages of Zealand. Wikipedia describes him as a pioneer of both Symbolism and social realism in Denmark, drawing on Danish folk tradition while absorbing modern influences. His homes after his marriage to Sigrid Kähler in 1896 included Karrebæksminde and Baldersbrønde near Hedehusene; in his final decade he lived at Sankt Jørgensbjerg in Roskilde, where he died on 10 September 1933.

How it was painted

The work is oil on canvas and is dated by its inscription to 1901. Its early listing is number 450 in H. Chr. Christensen's Fortegnelse over Malerier og Studier af L. A. Ring i Aarene 1880-1910, published in 1910. The sources consulted do not agree on the measurements: Wikidata gives 54.4 by 76.4 cm, while the SMK-derived data on Wikimedia Commons gives about 40 by 61 cm. The dimensions are therefore left open here.

Where it went

The SMK data mirrored on Wikimedia Commons gives the acquisition date as 31 December 1995. Since then the painting has been lent to a number of exhibitions, among them Sjælebilleder: symbolismen i dansk og europæisk maleri 1870-1910 (2000-01), Naturens spegel / The Mirror of Nature: Nordic Landscape Painting 1840-1910, shown at SMK from October 2007 to February 2008 (catalogue number 89), and L.A. Ring - Årstiderne, which toured three Danish museums in 2022-23. The painting is also listed on the website of Ringsvenner, the association attached to L.A. Ring's studio in Roskilde. Whether it is on view at SMK at present is not stated in the sources fetched.

Why it is in Mura

Thaw belongs to Mura's Nordic Light collection with the mood wintry: snow giving way, and a fence marking out the pale fields.