Two friends, close in age and origins, who even shared the same surname. Social realists as they struggled for success, both changed when they attained it.
Denmark
He retired to Roskilde, where he painted superb views of its Gothic cathedral, and looking out over the fjord.
Some delightful gardening and rural tales, and a couple of views of the gardens of Rome. It seems that he retired after about 1922.
Landscapes generally without stories attached. Among them two scenes of early caravanning, a sower, and back to the railway.
In these years, he painted peaceful rural scenes, without the social narratives which had featured in his earlier work.
A decade in which Ring’s life and work were transformed by marriage to his muse, Sigrid. Many of his best paintings are here.
Transition from paintings of an elderly couple struggling to survive a harsh winter, to well-dressed girls sewing in the sun.
A remarkable series showing skilled workers at their workplaces, then a visit to Italy, where he painted 3 mummified corpses in the catacombs. Also his finest landscape.
Social realism in the stony fields of Denmark, a wonderful view of Jerusalem, and his friend LA Ring facing a passing critic – and more.
His breakthrough came in 1884, with the first of a series of social realist paintings. It was a hard life in the Danish countryside, and death is never far away.
The Eclectic Light Company 