Exhibited: Den Frie Udstilling 1902 no. 44, here dated 1902. The Nivaagaard Collection, “Symbolismen i dansk kunst”, 1993 no. 36, here entitled “Egen i Landskab” (The oak in a landscape) and dated 1902–3. The Skovgaard Museum, Øregaard Museum & Næstved Museum, “Svend Hammershøi - en kunstner og hans tid”, 2008, here entitled “Landskab 1902” (Landscape 1902) and dated 1902.

Literature: Tove Jørgensen, “Svend Hammershøi 1873–1948, Maler og formgiver”, 1990, mentioned pp. 25–26 and 134, ill. p. 25 fig. 16. Here dated Jan.-Feb. 1902. Anne-Mette Villumsen, Iben Overgaard & Sidsel Maria Søndergaard (ed.), “Svend Hammershøi - en kunstner og hans tid”, The Skovgaard Museum, Øregaard Museum & Næstved Museum, 2008, mentioned pp. 25, 127–130, ill. pp. 10–11, 26, 127.

Provenance: Bruun Rasmussen auction 172, 1964 no. 83.

During the work on the present painting, Svend Hammershøi wrote the following in his diary on 27 January 1902: “The oak stands in the foreground of the painting in the left half, the old giant is standing on a hill surrounded by a circle of large mighty stones, here is a wide view of a great landscape (I hope it will look really big in the painting). The motifs for this landscape are almost taken from Refsnæs.” (quoted from Tove Jørgensen, “Svend Hammershøi 1873–1948, Maler og formgiver”, 1990, pp. 25–26).

Svend Hammershøi has repeated the motif in a later pencil and ink drawing from 1908, which can be found at the Museum at Koldinghus (Inv. No. 01449×14904).

From the mid-1890s to the beginning of the 20th century, Hammershøi was particularly interested in the magnificent Danish landscape with the traces that history had left in it: “It is from this period, the two main works Landscape 1901 and Landscape 1902 [present painting] originates. Both show slightly hilly landscapes, where a leafless tree stands in majestic solitude in the foreground. The faint green and grey hues create a melancholic impression, where you can imagine the wind rushing coldly over the ground and the bare branches are trembling. Rikard Magnussen writes about Hammershøi's works from this period: ”They were landscapes of a quietly melancholic character, with leafless trees in hazy silhouette against misty grey air and vast, lonely, grey-green surfaces of earth, sometimes further emphasized in the mood by a dolmen or a similar, weather-beaten, Nordic ancient monument.“ The paintings show the strenght and weakness of nature. The trees are big, but without their leaves one can be left wondering whether they are dead and are standing as hollow trunks, or whether they will burst into full leafage with the coming of spring. There is a moving play between the beautiful and the sad, between the down-to-earth and the symbolic in the trees' powerful statements about life.” (Anne-Mette Villumsen, “Et træ er et træ er et træ” in “Svend Hammershøi - en kunstner og hans tid”, 2008, p. 127).

About Svend Hammershøi's early tree motifs, Henrik Wivel writes: “Svend Hammershøi's early motivic fondness for trees [...] never fades away. [...] The undulating movement of the bare trees against the grey sky appears as a kind of raster of impermanence, with which the artist inscribes his art in the existential allegory. In his work, the tree becomes an image of life in the face of death, striving in the face of leaf fall, growth in the face of decay - a motif that also left a lasting mark in his ceramic works. The artist was aware of this relationship, and in the formative years he tried to mythologize it and anchor it symbolically.” (Henrik Wivel, “Åndemusik” in “Svend Hammershøi - en kunstner og hans tid”, 2008, p. 25).