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| Laurits Andersen Ring (1854-1933), Sommerdag ved Roskilde Fjord, 1900, Oil on Canvas, 37.4 by 56.7 in., Randers Kunstmuseum, Denmark |
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L.A.Ring, At Breakfast, The Painter’s
wife, Sigrid Kahler, 1898. This
beautiful painting is in the collection of the National
Museum in Stockholm,
Sweden, which does not
publicly disclose the dimensions of the work online.
How strange!
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| Ole Ring (1902-1972), The Still River, Oil on Canvas, 14 ¼ by 20 in., Private Collection |
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| Ole Ring, A Sunny Day in Hellested, Oil on Canvas,13 by 19 ¾ in ., Private Collection |
If you’ve been making art since you were knee-high to a
grasshopper and decide for some peculiar reason to become a painter when you
reach the age of consent, it’s advantageous to have a father or mother in the
business so you don’t think it’s such a dumb idea to begin with. Throughout the history of art, there have
been numerous painter dynasties, including the Holbeins and the Breughels,
Elder and Younger. The late Richard V.
Goetz (1915-1991), who taught painting at The Art Students League, my daycare
center, and his wife, Edith, also a painter, had six children, and four of them
became artists themselves.
In days of yore, when painting was considered a highly
skilled craft with rules and regulations, lots of kids were apprenticed to the
trade through family connections of one sort or another. Even that eccentric genius Vincent van Gogh took
inspiration and instruction from a near-relative, Anton Mauve, a
cousin-in-law. Van Gogh revered Mauve (1838–88),
who introduced him to painting in both oil and watercolor and lent him money to
set up a studio before they had a falling out when Vincent took up with a pregnant
prostitute. Mauve apparently thought that was a bit too much, so he ended
his association with Vincent.
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Anton Mauve (1838-88), Morning Ride on the Beach, 1876, oil
on canvas, 17.7 by 27.6 in, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Years ago I copied a print of this brilliantly composed, dramatic painting, and a collector liked my copy enough to pay me a few dollars for it.
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Right now I’ve been thinking about the two Rings, Laurits
Andersen Ring (1854-1933) and his son, Ole Ring (1902-1972), both excellent
Danish painters you don’t hear much about in America unless, perhaps, you
follow the art auction circuit.
Laurits was one of the foremost Danish painters at the turn
of the 20th century. A convert to
atheism, he is credited with introducing symbolism and social realism to Denmark’s
art world, two styles of painting that he juxtaposed throughout his long and productive
painting career. His painting Summer Day
by Roskilde Fjord, which is in the Randers Kunstmuseum in Denmark,
is considered one of the masterpieces of Danish culture. There is an extensive collection of his
paintings and drawings in the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen
and there are there are examples of his work at practically every Danish art
museum.
As with so many of the wonderful 19th Century and early 20th
Century painters, there are a lot of interesting tales to be told regarding Laurits
Ring’s private life, just behind the magic curtain of his marvelous paintings. These hidden stories wear you out in the
retelling, even if you are just copying Wikipedia entries. But they are worth
the effort for the most part because they reveal the often surprising humanity of these great painters, while your own life is as boring as toast, spent mostly laboring clumsily on your own canvases and wishing you could paint half as well as they could..
L.A. Ring was born Laurits Andersen in the village
of Ring in southern Zealand,
the largest of Denmark’s
islands where the Capital of Copenhagen is located. Ring's father was a wheelmaker and carpenter
and his mother a farmer’s daughter. At
the age of 15, Laurits was apprenticed to a housepainter because his older
brother was destined to take over their father’s business. In 1873, the opportunity to go to Copenhagen
arrived when a local merchant hired Laurits to do some paintwork in the
Capital. While in Copenhagen,
Laurits studied painting privately for two years and in 1875 was accepted at
the Danish Academy
of Arts. Ring disliked the Academy’s strict
classical studies in drawing but stayed on for three years. He also studied briefly with one of my idols,
the great Norwegian painter Peder Severin Kroyer, whom I wrote about in an earlier
post.
In 1881, Laurits Anderson and his friend, the painter Hans
Andersen from the village of Brændekilde,
decided to take the names of their native villages in order to avoid confusion
at their joint exhibition. So Laurits became
L. A. Ring, and Hans became H. A. Brendekilde, who happens to be another
excellent Danish Realist.
Ring became increasingly interested in the difficulties of
the poor and social justice for the lower classes during a period of political
turmoil in Denmark
in the early 1880s. The Prime Minister,
J.B.S. Estrup, had unilaterally suspended the democratic decision-making
processes laid down in the Danish Constitution to enact some social and
financial reforms. Ring was active in
the "Rifle movement", a revolutionary group of students taking up
arms training in preparation for a rebellion.
But the opposition forces reached a consensus with Estrup’s initiatives
and there was never any civil violence.
The young painter had other things on his mind as well. In Copenhagen
he became a close friend of the family of lawyer and amateur painter Alexander
Wilde. He spent Christmas and summers with the family and formed a “very close”
friendship with Wilde's wife, Johanne. Ring
and Mrs. Wilde exchanged “frequent and intimate” letters and he painted many
tender portraits of her, but nevertheless she remained faithful to her husband.
Realizing the hopelessness of his passion
for Johanne, he broke off his relationship with the Wilde family and became
severely depressed, as always happens in these cases of unrequited love, I’m
led to believe.
Word got around. In
1894, Ring was used as a model for a character in the novel Night Watch
(Nattevagt) by the Danish author Henrik Pontoppidan, an old friend of his. In
the novel, Ring is the unflattering character Thorkild Drehling, a painter and
failed revolutionary, who was in love with his best friend's wife. Ring apparently did not object to the
unflattering depiction, but he was offended that Pontoppidan would publicly
divulge his infatuation with Johanne Wilde in that way. Deeply hurt by Pontoppidan's betrayal of
confidence, Ring broke off this friendship as well, never giving an
explanation. These artists’ types are super-sensitive,
aren’t they?
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| L.A. Ring, Johanne Wilde at her Loom, 1892, Oil on Canvas |
After a year of painting in Italy,
Ring recovered his composure and started working in 1895 on a series of paintings with fellow painter Sigrid Kahler as a model. She
was the daughter of ceramic artist Herman Kähler. Ring married Kähler in 1896 when she was only
21 and he was 42. The couple had three
children, including Ole, their painter son, before Kähler died of lung cancer in
1923 at the age of 49.
Once he became a family man, Ring seems to have given up sowing any more wild oats. Now it was just boring medals
and honors for this Great Dane, and astute analyses of his painting themes by
hard-working art critics and historians who get paid to explore such things. Ring’s decision to become an atheist
apparently had a profound effect on his work and “he began to explore motifs
and symbolism that contrasted forces of life and death,” according to a
contributor to Ring’s Wikipedia entry. “Others have interpreted the drive
towards unsentimental realism as an expression of Ring's atheist life stance,”
the author continued. Ring’s biographer
Peter Hertz neatly summarized the painter’s life and work:
“His oeuvre remains as his life and essence: The still water of profound
depth.”
L.A. Ring’s son, Ole, painted similar subjects in a style
highly influenced by that of his father.
There are lots of images of his highly accomplished work online and many
of his paintings have been sold at auction.
That’s all I know about Ole Ring, the son of L.A. Ring. And I’m so happy about that, between you, me and
the lamppost.
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| L.A. Ring, Walking in a Rye Field, 1905, Oil on Canvas, 27 ¼ by 22 ½ in., Private Collection |
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| L.A. Ring, Village Street in Baldersbrønde, Oil on Canvas, 1905, Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark |
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| L.A. Ring, The Artist’s Wife by Lamplight, 1898, Oil on Canvas, 68 by 87 cm, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen |
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| Ole Ring, Ugledige, Denmark, Oil on Canvas, 11 by 16 in., Private Collection |
