MARGRETHE II - Nordic influences

With her art's close ties with nature, and especially the Nordic countryside with its ever changing moods, capricious weather and varying seasonal guises, Queen Margrethe harbours a great admiration for Finnish painters, such as Helene Schjerfbeck, Albert Edelfelt, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Fanny Churberg and Pekka Halonen.

The Queen shares an everlasting fascination with nature - both on a large and a small scale - with Finnish and Nordic artists in general. In addition to lyrical depictions from nature, in recent years the Queen has engaged herself with the atmospheric landscape that was a general trend in Nordic landscape painting from the 1890s - a trend that has been resurrected by those artists of today who take their starting-point in nature.

The manifold vicissitudes of nature - that at once tangible, intangible and incomprehensible material - are the all-important source of inspiration and the driving force of Queen Margrethe's art. To this is added a receptive mind and an aesthetic sensibility as well as an indefinable urge to express herself and, not least, the ability to give her impressions artistic form.

With its general tendency to simplify form, Queen Margrethe's painting technique is basically modernist. The style is related to classical modernism, of which the Danish painters Edvard Weie and Olaf Rude are the most distinguished representatives, and characterises most of 20th century classical, figurative painting.

Queen Margrethe's commitment to art gathered momentum in 1981, and she started to take painting lessons from the Danish painter Mabel Rose, with whom the Queen has continued to take regular lessons during the part of the year when parliament is in session and the Queen is at their disposal. Under professional guidance the Queen started to work with acrylic paints on canvas.