Hankeøj

The author of this tranquil autumn landscape is the painter Johan Thomas Lundbye, one of the most expressive Danish landscape artists of the first half of the 19th century. A great enthusiast of archaeology and local history, Lundbye presents us here with the image of a "hankehøj," a Bronze Age burial mound (1700-1100 BC) that is still visible today near the village of Vallekilde in Zealand (Sjælland), the largest of the Danish islands.

The hankehøj of Vallekilde, nestled in the beautiful countryside of Odsherred, has a diameter of 23 meters and a height of about 4 meters, and it has never been excavated. Its treasures are presumably still intact inside.

It is surprising to note that most of the burial mounds in Europe are found scattered solely in Denmark, with a total of 86,000 examples, 20,000 of which date back to prehistoric and protohistoric times.

The painting—now in the Hirschsprung Collection in Copenhagen—is one of the last works before the young artist's death, which occurred in 1848 from a gunshot wound while he was enlisted in the patriotic army fighting against the Prussians. Lundbye was just 29 years old.