Spring (Foråret), preliminary study

Hanne Westergaard observed, “Slott-Møller won considerable recognition from the very beginning. After his marriage to the painter Agnes Rambusch in May 1888, he and his wife went to Italy for the autumn and winter of 1888-9. Both were attracted to early Italian art. A change in his painting followed: his content became more Symbolistic, and more emphasis was placed on the decorative". (Dreams of a Summer Night, Exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery, 1986, p.252).

With such a mindset, Harald Slott-Møller was won over by the appeal of the Pre-Raphaelites during his trips to England in the early 1890’s. He displayed this new Symbolist outlook in 1891 with Danish Landscape (SMK collection, Copenhagen). Inspired by the English Arts & Crafts movement, and particularly William Morris, Slott-Møller executed his work using a cast iron relief, depicting the fertility of the Danish countryside with a decorative stork gliding over a field abundant with fresh corn. (A similar version in the Hirschsprung collection, Copenhagen, was produced in plaster relief).

Spring brings together the naturalistic and symbolist styles of Slott-Møller’s painting, harmonising a medieval allegorical motif with contemporary Symbolism. In 1896 this was quite startling. As Margit Mogensen noted, “Of course the critics wondered what to make of the painting”.(M.Morgensen, ‘The symbolistic idea in Danish painting: Young girls in Nature’ in History of European Ideas, 1995, Vol. 20, No. 1-3, p. 357). N.V. Dorph, when addressing the larger canvas in the Hirschsprung Collection, for which the present lot appears to be a study, struggled to grasp the symbolist nature of the girl in the landscape, but eloquently relayed “the very early spring’s cool sunshine over the meadows and fields, the deep blue colour of the water … and the army of sparrows, whose loud cries fill the air, together give an excellent impression of Spring” (N.V.Dorph, trans., quoted in Sjælebilleder: Symbolism I dansk og europæisk maleri 1870-1910, exhibition catalogue, SMK, 2001, p. 284).

This study gives an insight into Slott-Møller’s approach to his final version, revealing only very minor changes in composition. C.K. Laursen observes that image itself has proved stronger than the early critics, “Like Hammershøi, Slott-Møller’s art also tended to meet a mixed reception. And this image of a barefoot young girl, sitting in a vernal landscape with flowers in her hair as a symbol of spring itself, was also criiticised for wearing ‘the sheen of unreality’….However, the artist got the benefit of the doubt, and today the painting hangs in the same room as Hammershøi’s works and is one of the museum’s main masterpeices” (C.K. Laursen, Emergences: Vilhelm Hammershøi, Valdemar Schønheyder Møller and photography, exhibition catalogue, Copenhagen, 2021, p.112).