The work The Marble Garden, Fredensborg Palace, saturated with colour, light and sun and painted at her royal residence in northern Zealand in 1983, is an example of the Queen's earliest paintings.

The style is naturalistic and distinguished by a tight and stringent composition demanded by the choice of motif. Strong sunlight highlights the shapes and contours. The daring colour scheme dominated by the verdant green shades of the lawn framed by the dark green diagonal line of the hedge with its violet shadow shows the Queen to be a true colourist.

The Queen sees, thinks and remembers in colours, and this optical aesthetics characterises not only her painting but also her artistic activities as designer of ecclesiastical textiles and stage sets. Furthermore, the energy and dynamics inherent in the colour and light reveal a vital and uninhibited temperament that enthusiastically interprets whatever she visualises.