The MKdW presents a selection of roughly 40 “mood landscapes.” With a keen sensitivity the artists have attended to the particular natural phenomena of the north – be it the bright midsummer night or the crispy clear starry nights of winter. Air and cloud movements as well as atmospheric changes in the course of day and time seem to reflect the “Nordic depth of soul.”
The painters picked up the impulses emanating from French impressionism, but on their search for artistic and national autonomy they opted for the sparsely populated coastal regions of the Netherlands, North Germany and Scandinavia. Artists working in Skagen at the tip of Northern Jutland, such as Anna and Michael Ancher and Peder Severin Krøyer, created mood-evoking landscapes. While Hans Peter Feddersen, Max Clarenbach and Niels Bjerre were fascinated by the calm and vastness of uninhabited nature, figures in the paintings of Johannes Wilhjelm added to the mysterious and melancholic impression of those works.