Janus La Cour – From the Shore at Moesgård, 1892

"We never see the landscape just as it is – we always see it through a filter created by history, art history or literature’

There is a changeless feel to the scene because the landscape right there, by Moesgaard, has looked like this for many years, and because the people of Aarhus know it so well. Yet it is also changeable, affected by human culture and the ever-growing city.

On the one hand, this work of art shows that our present day is just a small slice within the passage of time, a brief moment in eons of history. I am this little ‘I’ who walks here, just as thousands of others have gone before me. There is an element of memento mori (ed. ‘remember you too will die’) in that – knowing that you are a small part of something big.

On the other hand, there is also a beautiful message of hope in Golden Age pictures like this. The painters of the Danish Golden Age shared a sense of facing any given landscape for the first time, seeing it as if at the dawn of creation.

So there is an awareness of the passage of time in the painting, but also an appreciation of the present. After all, the past must inevitably become an uncompromising present. Therein lies a ceaseless tension that I always carry with me. Janus la Cour and his brushstrokes contributed to creating this landscape, evoking it in paint. The way we see and remember this landscape is to a very great extent defined by the Golden Age period. La Cour has accustomed our eyes to seeing the beauty of Moesgaard Beach. We never see the landscape just as it is – we always see it through a filter created by history, art history or literature."

The work is on display at level 8