Winter Landscape. Utterslev near Copenhagen

Albert Gottschalk found many of his motifs in what was at the time the outskirts of Copenhagen. Here, he painted a scene from Utterslev north of Copenhagen on a clear and frosty day. The foreground is shaded, but in the middle distance and between the trees we sense the strong sunlight that makes the snow luminous.

Impressionistic depictions

As an open-air painter, Gottschalk finished his paintings on-site, usually completing them in a single sitting or as an unbroken process. Indeed, the picture has been painted with rapid, broad brushstrokes, and as in Impressionistic depictions of a single moment, the pure colours have been dragged into the shaded areas.

Gottschalk's Impressionistic endeavour

Within the Danish art scene of the decades preceding 1900, only Theodor Philipsen (1840-1920) and Anna Ancher (1859-1935) can be said to consistently use an Impressionistic touch in larger groups of work. Nevertheless, a number of Gottschalk’s works also evince this endeavour to let painting be about the purely painterly, about light and colour made palpable.

A naturalistic style of atmospheric painting

However, the main impression conveyed by his art is similar to e.g. the art of P.S. Krøyer (1851-1909) insofar as it is a primarily naturalistic style of atmospheric painting where Impressionistic elements will occasionally be employed in order to depict the chosen subject matter as realistically as possible.