Danish prime minister’s New Year’s speeches framed by controversial 19th-century paintings

A wealthy businessman had a deliberate political motive when he bequeathed his extensive collection of L.A. Ring paintings to the Danish state, ensuring the works would surround the prime minister’s daily life, reports DR.

In both 2020 and 2021, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen delivered her New Year’s address with L.A. Ring’s 1885 painting I høst (In Harvest) prominently displayed behind her. The work depicts an exhausted farmer in tattered clothing facing an endless field—a stark contrast to the idealised rural scenes that dominated 19th-century Danish art.

Peter Nørgaard Larsen, senior researcher at Denmark’s National Gallery (Statens Museum for Kunst), explains that Ring’s unflinching portrayals of poverty broke sharply with tradition. “Everything in Danish art looked neat—until L.A. Ring. Suddenly it was ugly, absurd, grotesque. For him, it was essential to show that the world can be harsh,” Larsen says. “The wealthy elite, used to decorative paintings of happy peasants, were shocked. Many saw his work as left-wing propaganda.”

The collection’s donor, businessman O.P. Christensen—who, like Ring, had risen from rural poverty—stipulated in his 1950s will that the 31 Ring paintings should hang in the Prime Minister’s Office and official residence, Marienborg. “He wanted every sitting prime minister to confront this reality daily, to govern with the struggling population in mind,” Larsen notes.

Ring’s raw social realism, including monumental canvases like I høst (measuring 190 x 154 cm), redefined Danish art by centring the rural poor as heroic yet trapped figures. His influence extended to contemporaries like H.A. Brendekilde and Erik Henningsen, whose works—such as Udslidt (Worn Out, 1889), depicting a screaming farm wife, and Den højeste ret (The Highest Justice, 1886), showing the exhumation of an infant’s corpse—laid bare the era’s brutal inequalities.