Landskab med en gedebuk 1857

Curator: I'm struck by the stillness of this little landscape. It feels very self-contained. Editor: Yes, and this unassuming work is titled "Landscape with a Goat" by Jens Peter Lund, dating from 1857. The artwork, rendered through engraving, depicts exactly what it says – a rustic scene where a goat stands quietly under a tree next to some felled lumber. What does it evoke for you? Curator: I notice a profound sense of melancholy despite the natural beauty. Goats, traditionally associated with virility and stubbornness, seem subdued here, almost reflective in the undergrowth of cut wood. Editor: That melancholy may reflect broader anxieties of the period. Rural life was romanticized but increasingly disrupted by industrialization. Prints like these circulated widely and became tools for understanding collective emotional identity tied to pastoral memory. Curator: Right, Lund uses engraving – a repeatable, accessible medium – making this melancholy widely available. The goat then transforms into a vessel for broader anxieties, more than just a single animal in a landscape. I am looking for symbols, metaphors...it reminds us that human anxieties permeate our environments, and shape how we see them. Editor: Interesting thought, and consider that Lund’s artistic circle wrestled with ideas of nationhood expressed through the intimate portrayal of local sites like this. The goat and fallen tree symbolize life persisting through the disruptive clearing and logging that fed modernization. Curator: It's a landscape imbued with the anxieties of its era but also with an attempt to find persistence. Lund isn’t simply showing a landscape but rather hinting at a visual, persistent collective experience with visual elements meant to stay rooted in us. Editor: An excellent example of art mediating socio-political forces. Curator: Thank you! Seeing those reverberations through visual codes transforms how I view the quiet melancholy of this goat and landscape.