Photo of the Week #340

March 10, 2025
Christopher Rauschenberg often approaches photography as a kind of visual assemblage, looking for scenes where a variety of elements come together in ways that are both playful and visually satisfying. From this standpoint, it makes perfect sense that the Faaborg Museum in Denmark would be an irresistible subject for him.

The painting in the far room is by Johannes Larsen, who was born on the Danish island of Funen and studied art in Copenhagen. There he helped form a group of landscape painters called the Funen Painters group, an artists' colony who embraced painting outdoors in all forms of weather. Derided by critics as "peasant painters," the movement found a supporter in the industrialist Mads Rasmussenvwhod, who devoted himself to the creation of the Faaborg Museum. The museum was conceived of as a total artwork, which would situate the paintings in a sympathetic environment, with a design that embraced a lively combination of ornamented architecture and Danish modern furniture.

By shooting from one room looking into another, Rauschenberg contrasts the deep indigo walls in the foreground with the brightly lit red walls in the next space. The patterned tilework leads the eye to Larsen's painting April Shower, which shows two black-headed gulls bobbing in a light dappled bay, with the water rippling from the springtime storm on the horizon. It's easy to imagine Rauschenberg taking pleasure in the looming storm in the painting's background, which seems poised to blow in and stir up this well balanced scene.