Selected works

An ardent defender of a pictorial classicism inherited from the masters of the golden age of Danish painting, Janus La Cour established himself as one of the main Danish landscape painters of the second half of the 19th century. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen under Peter Christian Skovgaard. In 1868, like the masters of the previous generation, such as Eckersberg, Købke, Rørbye and Hansen, Janus La Cour responded to the call to travel and discovery and left for Italy.

Our painting, executed on the spot in 1870 at the end of his first Italian trip, depicts the remains of Bramante’s Nymphaeum. Located in Roman Lazio, the project was commissioned from the famous architect by the Colonna family in the early 16th century. The architectural work was never completed, and the ruins can still be seen on the outskirts of Genazzano.

Our painting, which is very spontaneous and resembles a very accomplished sketch, demonstrates La Cour’s virtuosity in capturing textures and light. The landscape is also free of human presence and time seems suspended. The subject of our painting reflects the painter’s admiration for antiquity, the Renaissance and classicism, at a time when pictorial upheavals were appearing, La Cour affirms his attachment to tradition. Faithful to the teaching of his masters, he composes his landscapes in search of an original framing, so dear to the geniuses of the golden age of Danish painting (fig.2). Through this intense luxuriant nature, and this ruin which seems to escape from it, La Cour invites the spectator, like Hubert Robert in the XVIIIth century, to a contemplative moment, questioning us on our own existence in front of what Diderot qualified as “poetics of ruins”.