L. A. Ring

(Ring 1854 - Roskilde 1933)

Short Biography

1854: born in the village of Ring in southern Zealand. 1869: becomes apprentice to a housepainter.

1875: admitted as a student to Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, studying under Frederik Vermehren.

1878: leaves Academy and returns to earning a living as a housepainter. Continued producing his own art in his spare time. A painting he submits for the spring exhibition at Charlottenborg in 1880 is rejected.

1882: starts exhibiting at Charlottenborg. Around this time his work consists mainly of socially-­‐realistic paintings, inspired by the lives of the rural population in his native region.

1885: suffers from depression and produces perhaps his most famous painting, Harvest, (today shown in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen). This marks the start of his wonderful paintings of full-­‐length figures, showing ordinary people frozen in stillness as they go about their daily lives. One example is The Signalman (today in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm). This is a theme that he will continue to return to for the rest of his life.

1886: briefly attends the classes given by P.S. Krøyer at the Free Studio School in Copenhagen. It is likely that Ring is influenced by the work of Jules Bastien-­‐Lepage in part through Krøyer.

1887: produces Evening. The old woman and death (now showing in the Statens Museum for Kunst). This is his first major work using symbolism and containing allusions to death.

1889: has his first exhibition at Kunstforeningen and has by this stage struck up a friendship with Christian Krogh, influential painter within the Skagen group of Danish painters and later to become mentor to Edvard Munch.

That same year he wins a stipend and spends time in Paris. In Paris he is able to see and study paintings by Millet, Bastien-­‐Lepage, Raffaëlli and others. On the way back he also visits The Netherlands and Belgium.

1891: paints Rooks in a field.

1893 -­‐ 1896: starts to achieve commercial success and continues his travels. He also develops his own approach to symbolism in his large-­‐scale canvas Spring (today in The Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen). This painting earns him the annual medal at the

1896 spring exhibition at Charlottenborg. It features his later wife, Sigrid Kähler, who goes on to appear in many of Ring's other works with symbolist references.

By 1899 Ring had married and moved to the countryside. He continues to make paintings showing the Danish countryside and, in a tribute to a previous master of Danish landscape painting, Johan Lundbye, produces The Painter Lundbye's bench on the shore of Lake Arresø (today in Ordrupgaard museum, Copenhagen).

1900: paints his famous Summer's Day at Roskilde Fjord (now in the Randers Kunstmuseum).

1908-­‐1909: his paintings are shown abroad, for example in London, Munich and Berlin.

1910-­‐1923: continues to have commercial success and, in 1924, has a solo exhibition at the Kunstforeningen.

1927: his paintings are part of a Danish exhibition in Brooklyn.

1930: becomes a member of the Academy of Fine Art in Stockholm. In autumn 1930 his works are exhibited there together with those of Vilhelm Hammershøi.

1932: his paintings are shown at the Venice Biennial. 1933: dies on 10 September.