View from the Artist's Window

For many Romantics, their chosen image of creative Genius was the plant, germinating from its seed in its own cycle of life. It obeyed natural law, and could be stunted only by outside intervention. In this painting plants themselves create a portrait of the painter. On a windowsill overlooking Copenhagen harbour stands an array of pots whose contents represent both his life and his art - an unsprouted seed, a protected cutting, a young agave, a flourishing hydrangea and a withered amaranth - together with casts of a child’s and an adult’s foot, and a sketchbook whose pages are waiting to be filled. A captive bird hangs in its cage above, doubtless yearning for its freedom. A mirror in the window is placed too high to reflect the artist, but his presence is everywhere in the work’s symbolic programme.