Suzanne Ludvigsen, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Dankvart Dreyer, 2008 no. 7.

Exhibited: Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik, Odense, “Hist hvor vejen...”, 1996 no. 31. Fyns Kunstmuseum and The Hirschsprung Collection, “Naturfortrolighed”, 2006–2007 no. 2. Museum Vestfyn, “Dreyer - Liv og landskab”, 2016 no. 6, mentioned and reproduced p. 11.

Literature: Suzanne Ludvigsen, “Maleren Dankvart Dreyer”, 2008, reproduced vol I, pp. 22–23 (detail), p. 69, and vol. II, p. 29. Mentioned in vol. I, pp. 69–71.

Provenance: Watchmaker in Grenå, Rasmus Christian Rasmussen, b. in Fangel on Funen in 1838. Pharmacist Carl Gustav Adolf Rasmussen (1882–1939), the son of the aforementioned, was gifted the painting when he graduated as M.S. in pharmacology in 1906. Mrs Gerda Rasmussen, Ålborg, daughter-in-law of C. G. A. Rasmussen (1992). Bruun Rasmussen auction 705, 2002 no. 1050, reproduced p. 37.

In the beginning of the 1830s, when Dankvart Dreyer was a student at the Academy’s Model School, he often used the summer months studying the nature around his hometown. In the lowlands, south of Assens, he found the perfect spot from where to paint a panorama of the town: “Out here in the wet salt marshes, not far from where the tongue stretches out from the mainland, the 18-year-old Dankvart must have stood when he painted his hometown nestled on the horizon like a mirage. A collection of tiled houses and a windmill near the church are surrounded by woodland, water and undulating fields, and yet another mill – all bathed in a bright afternoon light”. (Suzanne Ludvigsen, 2008, pp. 69–70). The inspiration from the Dutch Golden Age landscapes is easy to detect in the construction of the painting – with the flat foreground and middleground, as well as the low horizon and immense celestial sphere. The young artist is already touching upon some of the characteristics of his later work: “The light above the roofs and the reflection from the walls of the whitewashed houses. The church. The mills. A green meadow at the end of a gravel road. A bridge. Flowering poppies among swaying grass. A cluster of boulders lying in single file across shallow water. Sailing ships like swans on a cobalt blue sea. And high above the flat ground, in stark contrast thereto, is the sky with its varying expression – here resting, populated with small clouds” (Ludvigsen, p. 70).