Poul S. Christiansen (1855–1933)
View from a Window, 1913
Oil on canvas

Although Poul S. Christiansen lived on Funen throughout his youth, and is considered part of the artists’ group known as the Funen Painters, he did not paint a single landscape from the island after he began studying, in 1885, at the Artists’ Independent Study Schools in Copenhagen. Instead, he favoured Zealand landscapes, among others locations around Roskilde Fjord and Odsherred.

In the summer of 1913, Poul S. Christiansen painted at Bjergene near Fårevejle Beach by the Sejerø Bay. He had acquired a caravan equipped with a kitchen, alcove and living room. With his living arrangements sorted in this manner, he was free to settle wherever he pleased and enjoy nature to the fullest for as long as it suited him.¹ During this long and productive summer, from mid-June to mid-September 1913, Poul S. Christiansen created a large number of landscape paintings.

In View from a Window, Poul S. Christiansen has painted a view seen from a partially open window looking out over the beach. The flat landscape awash with bright summer light forms a clear contrast to the dark room in which the artist did his painting. A white towel hangs from a hook in the open window, and a vase of flowers stands on the windowsill. With these combinations, the picture points to the harmonious relationship between the artist and nature, which he obviously enjoys and welcomes inside.

Exactly where Poul S. Christiansen found this scene is unknown. It has been suggested that he painted this view from inside his caravan.² However, its windows were small and had single panes, so the subject matter depicted here must have been found elsewhere. It might show the view from the tenant farm Rødegaard, which Poul S. Christiansen briefly visited in 1913, or from the beach hut he also rented in the summer of 1913.³