Dyrehaven 1915

Curator: This is "Dyrehaven," an etching by Søren Lund, created in 1915. Editor: My first thought? It’s strikingly intimate, almost secretive. The pale etching against all that blank paper space gives it such a quiet intensity. Curator: Absolutely. Dyrehaven translates to "The Deer Garden," and was once a royal hunting ground, so it’s very deliberately chosen iconography. We’re looking at a deeply symbolic space within Danish cultural memory. A site of leisure and power, tamed nature if you will. Editor: The lines themselves—look how meticulously they define the bare branches, that central tree. It's all verticals, a forest of vertical lines, a visual encoding of restraint, only softened by those subtle shadows. Curator: Right, the barren trees evoke a specific emotional register, and beyond just the personal, also a national consciousness that understood the year 1915 as the height of the Great War, though Denmark remained neutral. The work acts as a quiet signifier of potential unrest. Editor: It’s like he’s using the landscape not just to depict a place, but to explore a state of being. The bare trees mirror the human condition of existential starkness during that period. Curator: Indeed, trees can become vehicles for all kinds of projection – they symbolize connection between earth and sky, between the living and the dead. Look at how they rise like spectral pillars in a clearing. Editor: What intrigues me is how this fits into his larger body of work. Is this preoccupation with verticality something he explored repeatedly, or is it a visual effect specific to this moment? Curator: I think, overall, this little etching works as a time capsule. Lund chose to capture a culturally symbolic landscape, adding emotional texture by imbuing the etching with the somberness of wartime. Editor: A quiet distillation of place and feeling captured within a deceptively spare arrangement of lines, shapes, and paper. Curator: A memory and its symbolism indeed resonate, centuries even, after it has been made manifest.