Bøgeskov i maj. Motiv fra Iselingen

The beech woods of a Danish May: trunks lit like columns, the new leaves a green that exists only in the first weeks of the year, the light falling through in visible shafts, and at the forest’s edge two children gathering flowers where the grass still shines from rain. P.C. Skovgaard (1817–1875) painted Bøgeskov i maj in 1857, with the motif from the park of Iselingen near Vordingborg, and the picture became the most loved landscape of its century — the beech established, fourteen years after his great oaks of Jægerspris, as Denmark’s tree, and the Danish spring given its definitive image. It belongs to the family of Golden Age forest paintings that ran from Dahl to Lundbye, but its nearness of view and its clear, almost childlike delight in the season made it the people’s favourite; it hangs in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).