Jens Ferdinand Willumsen (1863-1958) 
The Mountain on the Other Side of the Lake is Coloured Red by the Sun’s Rays, 1901
Watercolor on paper

After a trip to the United States where J.F. Willumsen failed to achieve the artistic breakthrough of which he dreamed, the late summer of 1901 saw him going for a hike in the Swiss Alps. His fiancée, the sculptor Edith Wessel (1875–1963), stayed in New York, and their correspondence reveals that she wanted Willumsen to find ‘a scene of an alpine glow over snowy mountains’ and paint it for her.¹

In this watercolour one sees Willumsen striving to fulfil her wish at a point when, in September, he visited the French town of Meillerie on the southern shore of Lake Geneva. There he found a scene of an alpine glow suffusing the mountains – albeit without snow. The watercolour incorporates a poem, written by Willumsen himself, in which he declares his love for Edith Wessel: The blood rises in my cheek / for one last smile she sends. / ‘Darling girl, forsake me never! / Dark, melancholy, left behind, / tied forever to the spot, I stand.

When Willumsen subsequently returned to Copenhagen, he continued working on the watercolour, painting several versions of it. J.F. Willumsens Museum owns a watercolour very similar to the version in The David Collection. The Hirschsprung Collection owns yet another variant.