Style Imitating Art: “Sommerdag ved Roskilde Fjord!”

Style Imitating Art…

Welcome to Style Imitating Art which comes from Salazar, Shelbee, and me. You can think of this series as fashion meets art museum! SIA challenges people to find inspiration in different art works, create looks based upon that art work, and share them with the curator for that piece. Salazar is this week’s curator with an amazing painting! I hope you enjoy this post, the information, and my interpretation.

How it works…

Every other Monday one of us selects an inspiration piece of art and posts the image on their blog. We then invite others to interpret that art work through their style. The following Monday, we share our outfits. The curator shares submissions the following Wednesday on her blog. Salazar chose this week’s art work for this round of Style Imitating Art. If you’d like, you can read why she chose it here. Please send your photo to Salazar by Tuesday, July 1st, 2025 by 10 pm EST. Style Imitating Art is an interesting way to inspire your outfits. You can see a few of my looks here, here, here, and here.

The artist…

Laurits Andersen Ring, one of the most important Danish painters at in the early 20^th century, was born in a village named Ring on August 15, 1854.  His father was a wheelmaker and carpenter.  When he was 15, he became an apprentice to a painter because his older brother would be taking over the workshop.  He took painting lessons while in Copenhagen.  Two years later, he was accepted at the Danish Academy of Arts in 1875.  The strict academic discipline didn’t agree with him so Andersen left. 

A little more…

In 1881, he and Hans Andersen (no relation) decided to change their last names and took the names of their villages.  This would prevent anyone confusing the two when they exhibited.  Ring first exhibited in 1882, but he didn’t achieve any recognition until 1884.  In the mid-1880s, Ring joined a revolutionary group, “The Rifle Movement.”  The Danish Prime Minister, Jacob Brønnum Scavenius Estrup, decided to bypass the government and rule by decree.  Ring saw what was happening to the lower classes and felt they deserved better treatment.  He had a gun in his pocked, waiting for the revolution to start.  It never did.   

Still more…

Ring suffered from depression over the course of his life.  The failure of the revolution as well as the death of his father which meant the loss of the family home (which was torn down) contributed to that depression..  Ring also had the misfortune of falling in love with his best friend’s wife.  After realizing she didn’t return his affections, despite penning love letters, Ring left for Italy in 1893 after receiving a travel stipend.  He remained there for a year.  Unfortunately, Ring agreed to be the model for a character in the novel, Night Watch (Nattevagt), by Henrik Pontoppidan.  Ring’s character was portrayed as a failed revolutionary and painter in love with his best friend’s wife.  He broke off his friendship with Pontoppidan and distanced himself from the best friend and wife.

Even more…

Ring found love when he returned from Italy.  He began a series of paintings with Sigrid Kähler, a fellow painter.  They married in 1896 when she was 21, and he was 42.  They had three children before her death in 1923.  Their son, Ole Ring, was also a painter and painted in a style similar to his father’s.  Some of the hallmarks of Ring’s style were the inclusion of certain motifs:  door or window thresholds, death, roads, and expansive landscapes.  He often included one or more objects at the very edge of the painting.  You can see that in our painting, the boat in the lower left corner. Ring became an atheist and began to explore the contrasts between the forces of life and death.  You can see this in many of his works of rural laborers.  One critic called him “the Apostle of the Hideous” due to the portrayal of the “unsentimental realism” of rural life.  Peter Norgaard Larsen, Senior Curator at Statens Museum for Kunst (the Danish National Gallery) says, “He was sensitive. There’s a lot of loneliness and death in his paintings in the earlier years (source).”  Larsen, who is the expert on Ring, says he “captured the landscape and atmosphere of Denmark on the brink of industrial revolution.” 

Style…

Many might consider Ring a symbolic painter due to his considerable use of motifs.  Others believe his art is more about social realism in Denmark.  Still others believe he’s a combination and say both facets of his art are just as important and complement each other.  Ring was not portraying Danish life romantically; he was portraying it as he saw it.  Granted, there were times the figures in the paintings were skulls rather than people.  The symbolism in his paintings can also be seen in the roads, paths, creeks, rivers, estuaries, open sea as well as bridges, railway tracks and telephone cables.  He used the roads and other types of pathways to lead the onlooker’s eye into and out of the paintings. 

Ring painted the rural people of Denmark during a specific period of time: “It’s a peek into a very specific time period for Denmark; a period that was pivotal in shaping the modern country, yet is largely forgotten in favor of the mid-21st century.  But perhaps more importantly, Ring’s work speaks to a very specific Danish experience: rural life at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. ‘If you compare his work to, for example, Grant Wood or Winslow Homer, he very much falls into that camp of ‘stick with what you know.’ Ring grew up in rural Denmark, in a small village called Ring, and that life was what he came back to again and again. It was what he knew and what inspired him,’ says Larsen.  He continues, He paints rural people with great respect, and even when he became very popular and wealthy, those were the people he felt most comfortable around. Interestingly, people think of Ring as a figure painter, but actually 70% of his work is landscape painting. In a way, it’s another figure – the landscape as self-portrait (source).’” 

Finally…

In September 1933, Laurits Ring suffered a brain hemorrhage with slight paralysis of his left arm. He died on Sunday, September 10th, 1933, aged 79 in 1933 at Sankt Jørgensbjerg, a district of Roskilde.  Try as I might, I could not find where he is buried. Here is an excellent blog with two posts devoted to Ring.

The art…

Measuring 37.5 in x 57.2 in (95.5 cm x 145.5 cm), Summer Day by Roskilde Fjord (Sommerdag ved Roskilde Fjord) is oil on canvas and was painted in 1900. It is considered one of the masterpieces of Danish culture and was part of the 2006 Danish Culture Canon. The Randers Museum of Art currently displays it. The museum is located in northeaster Jutland, Denmark. Since this is such a beautiful piece of art, I decided to give you the description from the museum (I used Google translate):

"The windless fjord is depicted at that time of the morning, when the sun is just rising, but has not yet gained warmth and strength. The cold blue light of the sky permeates the color scheme of the entire picture. In the foreground, the wide salt marsh, pierced by tidal holes, forms a blue-green surface. The light of the sky is reflected in the water and it seems as if there is not quite solid ground under your feet. On the fjord, on the left side, three fishing boats that have dropped anchor to clean nets are seen, and in the background of the picture, a characteristic hilly moraine landscape can be seen, which can be identified as Hvideklint, south of Frederiksværk.  The atmospheric panorama is considered one of the main works of Danish art. It was painted at the turn of the century in 1900. Ring is 46 years old and a new father when he paints the picture. The new life with his wife Sigrid (born Kähler) and children has a decisive impact on the life and art of the middle-aged artist. It is a new time that is being heralded, the coming of a new day, the emergence of a new world (source)."

My interpretation…

For some reason, I thought this piece had lots of brown in it. I had the same dress in shades of tans and browns. But, once I looked at the painting again, I realized there is more blue and green than brown in it. So, I switched to the other Flourish Wrap Dress by Kantha Bae. My friends, I have to tell you this is the weirdest dress ever! It’s a wrap dress, but you know how most wrap dresses have a whole to poke the belt through? Yeah…this one doesn’t! It’s also “free size” which means it’s for 00-24 or so. That means there is a lot of fabric. And, then there’s that weird piece that just hangs down (you can see me holding it out to the side in one photo). I’m going to have to do some figuring on this to make it more wearable. One thing I’m considering is making a buttonhole so the belt can go through. Anyway, this one does have various shades of greens and blues in it. Do I think this is a good interpretation? Not really…I think it’s the best I could do, and, frankly, I’m a little disappointed in myself.

The Lewk!

As I said, this painting, beautiful as it is, really stumped me. I chose these L’Artiste Delight slides simply because they contained earthy colors I saw in the painting. The foreground seems to contain lots of green so I thought this necklace and earrings from J Jill picked that up a bit.

Wrap it up, Marsha!

I urge you to look for L. A. Ring’s art. It is breathtaking. Some of it is macabre. Some of it is tranquil. All of it is beautiful. Just like I “failed” to meet the challenge, I think I failed to give you a true understanding of the artist. But, I also think he’s one of those artists who is difficult to understand. I’m definitely going to be looking to see if the Indianapolis Museum of Art has any of his pieces. So, can we talk? How does this piece of art make you feel? Does it seem more symbolic or socially realistic to you? What do you know about Denmark and its history? Please leave me a comment or two, and we can talk. I promise to respond as quickly as I can.

Don’t forget…

If you want to be included in the Style Imitating Art round up, send Salazar your photo by 10:00 pm EST, Tuesday, July 1st. Photos of everyone participating will appear on her blog on Wednesday, July 2nd! If you’re interested in joining us, consider all of your options…the colors, the textures, the feelings they evoke! Come on, give it a try! I think you’ll love it!

Thank you!

I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for reading, commenting, subscribing or emailing! It truly means so much to me! If you’d like to follow me on Instagram, you can find me here.

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Where you can find me:

Linking up with Nancy’s Fashion Style,  Fine-Whatever, Is This Mutton, Shelbee on the Edge, Chez Mireile, Suzy Turner, and Away from the Blue as well as Deb’s World and A Fresh Cup of Coffee. I also link up with This Blonde’s Shopping Bag, Doused in Pink, I do deClaire, Mummabstylish, Style Splash and Elegantly Dressed and Stylish as well as the Senior Salon Pit Stop (Esme’s Salon) and Slices of Life. Please check out these wonderful ladies and their blogs! I also am a co-host for Ageless Style on the third Thursday of the month and Songful Style on the last Monday of the month. I co-host Traffic Jam Weekend every Thursday with Melynda, Lisa, and Sue. I also host Final Fridays on the last Friday of the month as well as 10 on the 10th on the 10th of the month! I do hope you’ll check out all of these blogs and link parties!

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