{"id":6112,"date":"2025-08-27T10:46:49","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T08:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.perspectivejournal.dk\/skjulte-plantehistorier-naer-og-fjernlaesninger-af-dansk-kunst-med-stueplanter-fra-1820-til-1920-som-kilde-til-ny-viden-og-formidling\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T17:06:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T15:06:58","slug":"skjulte-plantehistorier-naer-og-fjernlaesninger-af-dansk-kunst-med-stueplanter-fra-1820-til-1920-som-kilde-til-ny-viden-og-formidling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.perspectivejournal.dk\/en\/skjulte-plantehistorier-naer-og-fjernlaesninger-af-dansk-kunst-med-stueplanter-fra-1820-til-1920-som-kilde-til-ny-viden-og-formidling\/","title":{"rendered":"Hidden Plant Stories: <\/br> Close and distant readings of houseplants in Danish art 1820\u20131920"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new focus on plantsVands\u00f8 and Leth-Espensen et al.<\/em>\">1<\/a><\/sup><\/h2>\n
\"Fig.
Fig. 1. Anna Ancher:\u00a0Two Little Girls Being Taught<\/em>. 1910. Oil on canvas. 54.4 \u00d7 64 cm. Art Museums of Skagen. Inv. no. 868. Photo: Art Museums of Skagen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Across the realms of science, art and culture, new attention is being directed towards plants. Three scientists recently published an estimate of the total weight of all life on Earth, showing that plants, with their 450 gigatonnes (Gt), make up by far the largest share of the global biomass while animal species account for only 2 Gt.PNAS<\/em> 115(25): 6506\u201311, 2018. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.1711842115<\/a>, last accessed June 2024.\">2<\/a><\/sup> The study highlights the unique position held by plants within the Earth\u2019s biosphere. It reminds us that plants do not inhabit our world; rather, we inhabit theirs. As the philosopher Emanuele Coccia has observed, plants have until now existed on the \u2018margins of the cognitive field\u2019.Planternes liv: blandingens metafysik<\/em>, Hans Reitzels Forlag, 2022, p. 27.\">3<\/a><\/sup> We tend to overlook them, or see them only through the functions they serve for us<\/em>: as timber in the forest, crops in the fields, ornamentals in gardens and on windowsills, or as a picturesque rolling landscape glimpsed from a car window.Plant-Thinking: a Philosophy of Vegetal Life<\/em>, Columbia University Press, 2013; Richard Mabey: The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination, <\/em>W. W. Norton & Company, <\/em>2015; Yuriko Saito: \u2018Plants and everyday aesthetics\u2019, in Line Marie Thorsen (ed.): Moving Plants<\/em> Exhibition catalogue, N\u00e6stved: R\u00f8nneb\u00e6ksholm Kunstmuseum, 2017, pp. 33\u201347. The idea of nature being subordinated to the interests of a given subject is not a new observation, see for example T.W. Adorno: Aesthetic Theory<\/em>, Continuum, 1997, p. 71. Also see Heather Swanson: \u2018The Banality of the Anthropocene\u2019,\u00a0Fieldsights<\/em>, 22 February, 2017. DOI: https:\/\/culanth.org\/fieldsights\/the-banality-of-the-anthropocene<\/a>, last accessed May 2017. This kind of plant blindness was first described in: James H. Wandersee and Elizabeth E. Schussler: \u2018Preventing plant blindness\u2019, The American Biology Teacher<\/em>, 61:2, 1999.\">4<\/a><\/sup> These days, however, global environmental crises of biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change show us that we cannot take plants \u2013 and their role in sustaining life on Earth \u2013 for granted. These crises compel us to view plants as botanical beings in their own right<\/em>, and to recognise the complexity of our shared existence with them. In response, anthropologist Natasha Myers has proposed the term\u00a0as a new, plant-centred starting point for knowledge and design.\u00a0Planthroposcene<\/em>\u00a0is a contraction of \u2018plant\u2019 and \u2018Anthropocene\u2019, the latter referring to the current geological epoch marked by extensive, human-driven environmental disruption.IGBP Newsletter\u00a0<\/em>41, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, 2000; Paul Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer: \u2018Geology of Mankind\u2019, Nature, <\/em>415:23, 3 Jan. 2002, doi:10.1038\/415023a, last accessed September 2016. Whereas the Anthropocene Working Group has ratified the thesis, the global geological community has rejected it. In the humanities, however, the concept is widely accepted.\">5<\/a><\/sup> The term \u2018planthroposcene\u2019 does not designate an era; rather, it constitutes an epistemic proposition, an approach grounded in the fundamental entanglement of human and plant life. Whereas the notion of the Anthropocene emphasises human (anthropos<\/em>) actions and their environmentally destructive consequences, the planthroposcene emphasises how plants are co-creative agents of a shared world, not a passive backdrop.History and Anthropology<\/em>, 28:3, 2017, \u2018. 299, DOI: 10.1080\/02757206.2017.1289934; as Myers puts it: \u2018Plants are the world-makers we need to heed, if we hope to grow liveable worlds\u2019, Natasha Myers: \u2018How to grow liveable worlds: Ten (not-so-easy) steps for life in the Planthroposcene\u2019, Opinion, ABC<\/em>, 7 January 2021, https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/religion\/natasha-myers-how-to-grow-liveable-worlds:-ten-not-so-easy-step\/11906548<\/a>, last accessed December 2022.\">6<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\"Fig.
Fig. 2. Laurits Tuxen:\u00a0Morning. From My House in Skagen<\/em>. 1916. Oil on canvas. 120 \u00d7 94 cm. Ribe Kunstmuseum. Inv. no. RKM844. Photo: Ribe Kunstmuseum \u00a9<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today, many contemporary artists and designers are creating\u00a0\u2019planthroposcene\u2019\u00a0spaces for encounters between humans and plants.Moving Plants<\/em> Exhibition catalogue, N\u00e6stved: R\u00f8nneb\u00e6ksholm Kunstmuseum, 2017; Giovanni Aloi: Botanical speculations. Plants in contemporary art,<\/em> Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2018; Anette Vands\u00f8: \u2018Kunsten at tale milj\u00f8\u2019, in Erlend G. H\u00f8yersten, Jakob Vengberg Sevel, Anne Mette Thomsen, Anette Vands\u00f8 (eds.): The Garden: End of Times, Beginning of Times<\/em>. Exhibition catalogue, Aarhus: ARoS, K\u00f6nig Verlag, 2017, pp. 76\u201386. Regarding rewilding in garden designs in public and private spaces, see for example Si\u00e2n Moxon, Justin Webb, Alexandros Semertzi and Mina Samangooei: \u2018Wild Ways: A Scoping Review to Understand Urban-Rewilding Behaviour in Relation to Adaptations to Private Gardens\u2019, Cities & Health,<\/em>\u00a07:5 (2023), pp. 888\u2013902. DOI:10.1080\/23748834.2023.2218016; Zo\u00eb Myers: Wildness and Wellbeing<\/em>, Springer Nature, 2020, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-981-32-9923-8<\/a>.\">7<\/a><\/sup> But how may art museums play their part in this green turn? How might they activate the collections they are legally bound to develop, preserve, present and study in order to attract renewed attention to our entangled coexistence with plants?8<\/a><\/sup> This is the overarching question asked by the research and dissemination project\u00a0Hidden Plant Stories<\/em>, supported by the Velux Foundation.Hidden Plant Stories<\/em>\u00a0(Skjulte Plantehistorier<\/em>) is an interdisciplinary museum project led by PI Anette Vands\u00f8. The authors of this article constitute the project\u2019s core research group. Also affiliated with the project are scholar and curator Gry Hedin, curator Rikke Zinck Jensen, writer Anne Green Munk, and art historian and gardener Astrid Steffensen, as well as student assistants Martin Bjerg Dahl, Amalie S\u00f8vndal Nielsen, and Sira Cecilie Hentze Kjeldal. The project is supported by the Velux Foundation\u2019s Museum Programme.\">9<\/a><\/sup> Establishing cooperation between Aarhus University, Ordrupgaard and The Hirschsprung Collection, our interdisciplinary team delved into Danish art museum collections to uncover overlooked plant histories. We have focused in particular on the houseplants which appear as seemingly incidental background elements in many nineteenth-century interior paintings [Figs. 1\u20134]<\/strong>. To facilitate a systematic investigation, alternating between close and distant analysis, we created a database of 452 Danish oil paintings produced between 1820 and 1920.10<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

The following article is a position paper \u2013 a genre often used in the early stages of natural science research projects to sketch out the field in which forthcoming research and dissemination activities will unfold. Here, we identify nineteenth-century Danish \u2018houseplant art\u2019 as an overlooked source of new knowledge about how our lives are entangled with those of plants. We argue that an interdisciplinary, plant-focused approach, alternating between close and distant readings, can pave the way for fresh perspectives on museum collections. This, in turn, may enhance the topical relevance of those collections and underline the role of art museums as essential contributors to our current era\u2019s collective efforts to cultivate new ways of seeing \u2013 and new understandings of \u2013 the plants with which we live.<\/p>\n

\"Fig.
Fig. 3. Anna Sophie Petersen:\u00a0An Evening with a Friend by Lamplight<\/em>. 1891. Oil on canvas. 145 \u00d7 173.4 cm. The Hirschsprung Collection. Inv. no. 3168. Photo: The Hirschsprung Collection.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Fig.
Fig. 4. Sigurd Wandel:\u00a0Children Drawing<\/em>. 1910. Oil on canvas. 60 \u00d7 74 cm. Ribe Kunstmuseum. Inv. no. RKMm0251. Photo: Ribe Kunstmuseum \u00a9<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/br><\/span><\/h2>\n

Identifying and studying Danish \u2018houseplant art\u2019<\/h2>\n

The only criterion for including a work in our specific collection is that the artwork must include a houseplant \u2013 defined here as a plant growing within a domestic setting. The collection was assembled through searches in the museum database SARA, supplemented with material from online resources such as Wikimedia Commons, where photographic documentation is often uploaded by auction houses in connection with sales.11<\/a><\/sup> Our focus is the nineteenth century, when the houseplant first emerged as a cultural phenomenon. Given that we did not identify any relevant works from 1800 to 1820, we specifically home in on the period from 1820 to 1920.Countess Anna Joachima Danneskiold-Laurvigen, n\u00e9e Ahlefeldt<\/em>, 1790\u20131791. Oil on canvas, 149.5 \u00d7 120 cm. SMK inv. no. KMS941. Since our timeframe is limited to 1820\u20131920, this work is not included in the coded database.\">12<\/a><\/sup> A total of 452 works have been coded using 27 datapoints relating to botanical, cultural, social and artistic factors, based on an initial round of analysis. The resulting database enables us to conduct multivariate statistical analyses of the motifs with a view to uncovering significant patterns. It also allows us to extract simpler information such as data on the increase in the number of paintings featuring houseplants over the course of the century [Fig. 5]<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Fig.
Fig. 5. Number of oil paintings featuring houseplants, 1820\u20131920, in 20-year intervals. Based on the 366 works for which we have been able to confirm the date. Graphics: Anette Vands\u00f8.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The project alternates between close and distant readings. Quantitative analyses can inform close readings of individual works; for example, an indication of how widespread the houseplant motif was at a given time can offer useful context for a close analysis. Data can also draw attention to unexpected patterns not immediately visible in the material, and it can confirm or challenge hypotheses arising from close readings of artworks or other sources. For example, we might ask whether women artists depicted plants differently from their male counterparts, or examine, confirm or nuance relationships between class and plant choice, or between plants and gender, as discussed in this article.<\/p>\n

State of the Art: Plant-centric readings of nineteenth-century art<\/h2>\n

Houseplants in nineteenth-century Danish art have not previously been the subject of a comprehensive, systematic study. Perhaps this is due to the unassuming nature of their role in the artworks: they generally appear as modest everyday elements that attract little attention. The figures in the paintings often have their backs turned on the plants or gaze past them, and the plants recede into the background as secondary, though often richly coded, elements [cf. figs. 1\u20134]<\/strong>. Generally speaking, the various details found in nineteenth-century interior paintings are laden with meaning, including the plants.T\u00e6t p\u00e5. Intimiteter i kunsten 1730-1930<\/em>. Exhibition catalogue, Copenhagen: Statens Museum for Kunst\/National Gallery of Denmark, 2016; Gertrud Oelsner and Anna Schram Vejlby, Fra den bedste side. Portr\u00e6t og f\u00f8lsomhed i guldalderen<\/em>. Exhibition catalogue, Copenhagen: The Hirschsprung Collection, 2017; Kasper L\u00e6gring: \u2018The (Re)birth of Genre Painting During the Danish Golden Age: The Case of the Studio \u201cPortrait\u201d\u2019, MDCCC 1800<\/em>, 11, 2022, pp. 53\u201380.\">13<\/a><\/sup> Flowers, moreover, were richly associated with symbolic connotations, and in the nineteenth century an actual language of flowers, or floriography, with codified messages became fashionable.Bulletinen 19\u201320, <\/em>2006\u20132007, <\/em>pp. 14\u201319; Henrik Holm: \u2018Sig det med blomster\u2019, in Eva de la Fuente Pedersen et. al (eds.): Blomster og Verdenssyn<\/em>, Exhibition catalogue, Copenhagen: Statens Museum for Kunst\/National Gallery of Denmark, 2013, pp. 220\u2013227; Karin Martinsson: Pelargoner: Kulturarv i kruka<\/em>. Prisma, 2000, pp. 119-125. For primary sources from Denmark, see for example August Bentzien: Flora: nyeste Blomstersprog eller orientalsk Blomstervexling, indeholdende nordiske Blomsters, Blades og Frugters symbolske Betydning, <\/em>M\u00f8rch, <\/em>1858. For a British context, see for example Brent Elliot: \u2018The Victorian Language of Flowers\u2019, Occasional Papers from the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) Lindley Library<\/em> 10, 2013. pp. 3\u201394.\">14<\/a><\/sup> In addition to this, art is always \u2018conditioned by the culture and worldview [of the historical period] in which the image was created,\u2019 as Eva de la Fuente Pedersen and Hanne Kolind Poulsen note in their introduction to the exhibition catalogue Flowers and World Views<\/em> (2013). Those aspects, culture and worldview, are also reflected in art\u2019s depictions of plants.Billedkunst og billedtolkning<\/em>, Nyt Nordisk Forlag, 1983. Norman Bryson further points out that the everyday elements in still lifes \u2013\u00a0\u2018the culture of the table\u2019 \u2013 must necessarily represent a deeper ideological layer that reflects a contemporary historical culture, Norman Bryson:\u00a0Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting<\/em>, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990, p. 12.\">15<\/a><\/sup> Indeed, several individual analyses of houseplants in Danish art examine their references to conventional symbolism beyond the work itself; their role in creating meaningful relationships between pictorial elements within a work; or the ways in which plant depictions reflect the period\u2019s culture.Michael Ancher og kvinderne fra Skagen. <\/em>Exhibition catalogue, Copenhagen, Charlottenlund and Skagen: The Hirschsprung Collection, Ordrupgaard and Skagens Museum, <\/em>2018, pp. 91\u2013133; other examples of analyses of houseplants in Danish works of art include: Kasper Monrad: Dansk Guldalder: Hovedv\u00e6rker p\u00e5 Statens Museum for Kunst. <\/em>Copenhagen: Statens Museum for Kunst\/National Gallery of Denmark, 1994, p. 88; Kasper Monrad: \u2018Det n\u00e6re og det fjerne\u2019, in Birgitte von Folsach et al. (eds.): Martinus R\u00f8rbye Det n\u00e6re og det fjerne<\/em>. Exhibition catalogue, Hellerup, Viborg, Niv\u00e5 and Ribe: \u00d8regaard Museum, Skovgaard Museet, The Nivaagaard Collection and Ribe Kunstmuseum, 2014, pp. 1\u201321; Rune Gade: \u2018Udkast til liv \u2013 Om Anna Sybergs akvareller\u2019, in Sofie Olesdatter Bastiansen (ed.):\u00a0Anna Syberg \u2013 \u00d8jeblikkets sk\u00f8nhed<\/em>. Exhibition catalogue: Faaborg: Faaborg Museum, 2020, pp. 22\u201353; Annette Rosenvold Hvidt: \u2018Jeg kan ikke blive fra den blomst\u2019, in Stine H\u00f8holt et al. (eds.): Fynboerne<\/em>. Kunsten frem for alt!<\/em> Exhibition catalogue, Odense: Kunstmuseum Brandts, 2023, pp. 90\u2013105; Sofie Olesdatter Bastiansen, \u2018\u00d8jeblikkets sk\u00f8nhed\u2019, Perspective Journal<\/em>, April 2022: https:\/\/www.perspectivejournal.dk\/oejeblikkets-skoenhed\/<\/a>. Lene Floris\u2019s article features examples of houseplants in art: Lene Floris: \u2018Haven i vindueskarmen\u2019, in\u00a0Folk og Kultur, \u00c5rbog for Dansk Etnologi og Folkemindevidenskab<\/em>,\u00a028:1, 1999, pp. 38\u201363.\">16<\/a><\/sup> A good example is the many analyses of Martinus Christian Wesseltoft R\u00f8rbye\u2019s View from the Artist\u2019s Window<\/em>, painted between 1823 and 1827 [Fig. 6<\/strong>].https:\/\/open.smk.dk\/artwork\/image\/KMS7452<\/a>\">17<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Art historian Dyveke Helsted describes R\u00f8rbye\u2019s painting of the view from his childhood room at Amaliegade 45 in central Copenhagen, with houseplants on the windowsill in the foreground and, in the distance, the view of the naval base at Nyholm with the fleet\u2019s berth and a masting house crane.Martinus R\u00f8rbye 1803\u20131848<\/em>, Thorvaldsens Museum, 1981, p. 29. The plant we identify as an aloe vera is described by Helsted as an agave.\">18<\/a><\/sup> Art historian Kasper Monrad emphasises how the windowsill and the open window act as a symbolic threshold between inside and outside: the home, with its plants, represents the familiar and safe, while the harbour serves as a window opening up on faraway worlds.19<\/a><\/sup> Building on art historian Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark\u2019s earlier analysis, Monrad interprets the row of plants as an allegory of \u2018a young person\u2019s life from birth until they stand on the threshold of leaving home and beginning adult life.\u2019Kunstv\u00e6rkets krav. 27 fortolkninger af danske kunstv\u00e6rker, <\/em>Fogtdal, 1990, pp. 67\u201377.\">20<\/a><\/sup> The cutting symbolises the child, thriving in the safe environment of the home; the plant with round, pink flowers is a globe amaranth, also known as bachelor\u2019s button in both Danish and English, a name pointing to burgeoning youth; and the flowering hydrangea at the far right symbolises the young person in full bloom, ready to step out into life through the open window.21<\/a><\/sup> Monrad posits the work within the broader context of Denmark in the 1820s, a time marked by economic decline and the loss of Norway in 1814. He argues that the painting reflects a yearning to venture out, but also \u2018the limited outlook that most Danes of the time shared, confined to their immediate surroundings, yet perhaps casting a cautious, stolen glance towards the wider world.\u201922<\/a><\/sup> In Monrad\u2019s reading, the houseplants serve simultaneously as an allegory of human development and as an image of Denmark\u2019s somewhat constrained horizons in this period.<\/p>\n

\"Fig.6.
Fig. 6. Martinus Christian Wesseltoft R\u00f8rbye:\u00a0View from the Artist\u2019s Window<\/em>. 1823\u20131827. Oil on canvas. 38 \u00d7 29.8 cm. SMK\/National Gallery of Denmark. Inv. no. KMS7452.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Danish ethnographer Lene Floris points to another abundance of meaning in R\u00f8rbye\u2019s work. She interprets the painting as a testimony to a burgeoning fashion in 1820s Denmark: the houseplant. For Floris, R\u00f8rbye\u2019s painting illustrates the arrival of houseplants in bourgeois homes at the end of the eighteenth century and their increasing spread throughout the nineteenth century.23<\/a><\/sup> The title of Floris\u2019 article reflects nineteenth-century usage, which described the keeping of plants indoors as \u2019the garden on the windowsill.\u2019Der Stubeng\u00e4rtner<\/em>, Voigt, 1821; Henry T. Williams: Window Gardening<\/em>, Henry T. Williams, 1872\">24<\/a><\/sup> Her article points to nineteenth-century paintings as an overlooked source for insight into a neglected field: the cultural history of Danish potted plants and the many narratives attached to them:<\/p>\n

Potted plants can tell many stories. They tell of human relationships with nature when nature is moved indoors and placed behind glass. They tell of home d\u00e9cor and fashion, and of women\u2019s tasks and gender roles as they changed over time.25<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since Floris wrote her article in 1999, global environmental crises have become an unavoidable context for us all, one that not only foregrounds environmental decline as a pressing theme; it also challenges the nature\u2013culture dichotomy that shapes our view of plants. Anthropologist Natasha Myers suggests that we take a closer look at how specific sites, especially gardens, invite particular relations between humans and plants:26<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Gardens are for me poignant sites for anthropological inquiry into the various ways that people stage relations with plants \u2013 whether these relations are intimate, extractive, violent, or instrumentalising.27<\/a><\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We propose that nineteenth-century depictions of \u2018the garden on the windowsill\u2019 can be read as stagings of the intimate and entangled relations with plants highlighted by Myers\u2019 concept of the planthroposcene. In art, we can trace the plant-related cultural-historical perspectives Floris mentions as well as the global dimensions that have become so insistently urgent today. Our interest, however, is not confined to viewing the works as sources of knowledge about houseplants as part of Danish cultural heritage. We also consider how art performatively helps to establish the space of meaning that conditions our perception of plants through the layers of significance embedded in the works. In other words, individual works reveal how categories relating to nature \u2013 but also to gender, class, nationality and so forth \u2013 are performatively created and negotiated through the aesthetic staging of plants within the domestic sphere. The following analyses provide concrete examples.<\/p>\n

This project thus situates itself within a wider wave of re-readings of historical art, where the thesis of the (pl)anthroposcene offers up new perspectives on older works. Paintings of city life by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775\u20131851) and Claude Monet (1840\u20131926) are now read as evidence of fossil fuel combustion and as signs of the dawn of the Anthropocene epoch.Art and Nature in the Anthropocene, Planetary Aesthetics, <\/em>Routledge advances in art and visual studies, 2021, p. 25. Regarding Monet, see: Nicholas Mirzoeff: \u2018Visualizing the Anthropocene\u2019, Public Culture, <\/em>26:2, 2014, pp. 213\u2013232, DOI 10.1215\/08992363-2392039.\">28<\/a><\/sup> In similar ways, nineteenth-century landscape paintings are being reinterpreted in relation to broader knowledge formations concerning, for example, colonialism, animal husbandry or cultural conceptions of nature.Jordforbindelser: Dansk Maleri 1780\u20131920 og det antropoc\u00e6ne landskab, <\/em>Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2018; Gry Hedin: \u2018Bl\u00f8d modstand og gyldne marker\u00a0\u2013 det danske landskabsmaleri genbes\u00f8gt\u2019, Baggrund<\/em>, 9 September 2023.\">29<\/a><\/sup> Moreover, the expanding field known as plant humanities introduces analyses that give topical relevance to natural, cultural and art-historical archives and collections, as exemplified by the extensive work of art historians Giovanni Aloi and Prudence Gibson.Botanical Revolutions \u2013 How Plants Changed the Course of Art<\/em>, Getty Publications, 2025; Prudence Gibson: Plant Contract: Art\u2019s Return to Vegetal Life<\/em>, Brill, 2018.\">30<\/a><\/sup> Finally, our project continues the work done by a series of Danish exhibitions with substantial research-based catalogues that have explored our complex relationship with plants through new readings of historical art. In particular, we draw on our earlier experience with ARoS\u2019\u00a0The Garden: End of Times; Beginning of Times\u00a0<\/em>(2017) and the Faaborg Museum and the Hirschsprung Collection\u2019s\u00a0Jordforbindelser \/ Down to Earth<\/em> (2018).The Garden<\/em> and chief editor on the peer reviewed part of the catalogue, while Gertrud Oelsner was editor of Jordforbindelser<\/em> alongside Gry Hedin, see Aarhus 2017; Hedin and Oelsner 2018; Vibece Salthe (ed.): Flora: Mellem mennesker og planter<\/em>. Exhibition catalogue, Stavanger and Randers: Stavanger Art Museum and Randers Kunstmuseum, 2019; Christian Gether, Gry Hedin and Naja Rasmussen (eds.): Blomsten i kunsten<\/em>. Exhibition catalogue, Ish\u00f8j: Arken, 2021.\">31<\/a><\/sup> Other examples, including Flora<\/em> at Stavanger and Randers Art Museums (2019) and Flowers in Art<\/em> at ARKEN (2021), have also helped establish the theme in a Danish context. Drawing on critical positions such as new materialism, feminism, and postcolonial and decolonial theory, this particular field of study and curating sees visual art as part of a broader visual culture that has contributed to naturalising problematic ways of seeing. It has been pointed out, for instance, how art aestheticizes Anthropocene environmental disruptions in ways that make people grow accustomed to them \u2013 and thus overlook them. As professor of visual culture Nicholas Mirzoeff concludes: \u2018The Anthropocene is so built into our senses that it determines our perceptions, hence it is aesthetic.\u201932<\/a><\/sup> Thus, historical art holds potential for nurturing alternative narratives if we choose to approach it differently.Perspective Journal<\/em>, <\/em>May 2024: https:\/\/www.perspectivejournal.dk\/koens-forsvinden-landbrug-og-liv-i-smks-landskabsmalerier\/<\/a>, and Hedin and Oelsner 2018.\">33<\/a><\/sup> Our central idea is precisely that nineteenth-century art can play a part in the broader effort to find better words, narratives and images for what we once called \u2018nature\u2019 \u2013 for the planet, the biosphere, or our life with other species \u2013 an endeavour currently much in demand across the Environmental Humanities.Aura Working papers<\/em> 1, Aarhus University, 2015, p. 3; Donna J. Haraway: Simians, Cyborgs and Women \u2013 The Reinvention of Nature<\/em>, Free Association books, 1991; Ursula Le Guin: B\u00e6reposeteorien om fiktion<\/em>, Forlaget Virkelig, 2022; Bruno Latour often puts forth similar points, see for example Line Thorsen and Anette Vands\u00f8: \u2018How to rediscover our ground after nature? A conversation with Bruno Latour\u2019 in Aarhus 2017, pp. 60\u201367.\">34<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

In our project, these analytical approaches are supplemented by a quantitative method building on distant reading methods that have become increasingly widespread in recent decades. In Danish art history, for example, Gertrud Oelsner has employed a form of distant reading in her work on nineteenth-century Danish landscape painting, based on a systematically compiled group of works.New Left Review<\/em>, Jan\/Feb. 2000; Gertrud Oelsner: En f\u00e6lles forestillet nation: Dansk landskabsmaleri 1807\u20131875, <\/em>Strandberg Publishing, 2022.\">35<\/a><\/sup> Multivariate statistics are not yet widespread in art-historical studies, but they will undoubtedly gain momentum with the rise of generative AI and the general development of digital art history as a field.Perspective Journal,<\/em> November 2021: https:\/\/www.perspectivejournal.dk\/det-reducerede-vaerk-datavisualisering-af-tusindvis-af-vaerkfotografier\/<\/a>\">36<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Seeing art through the lens of botany and horticulture<\/h2>\n

Despite the complex theoretical framework, our project is guided by a simple method: we focus on the plants. They govern our selection of works and our analyses. In close readings, we look beyond the narrow categorisation of plants as \u2018houseplants\u2019 and instead regard them as botanical specimens in their own right, with their own histories of cultivation and breeding. This raises questions about which plants we are looking at, where they originated, how they came to be on the windowsill, how they were cared for and by whom \u2013 as well as how they were perceived by the artist. We thus adopt an interdisciplinary approach to the works where botanical, ethnobotanical, and cultural-historical expertise informs our analyses. This perspective enables us to uncover broader narratives within the works; narratives about the entanglements of human and plant life.<\/p>\n

R\u00f8rbye\u2019s painting is particularly interesting because it is one of the earliest identified examples of Danish art featuring houseplants. It forms part of the starting point for the development we trace throughout the century, making the houseplant a recurring motif in art [cf. Fig. 5]<\/strong>. Houseplants were a relatively new phenomenon in the bourgeois home at the time, inviting readings that consider the historical context.<\/p>\n

The history of Danish houseplants is part of a larger history of global plant migrations, which gathered momentum in the seventeenth century when human activity fundamentally altered the distribution of plants.Fra Kvang\u00e5rd til Humlekule. Meddelelser fra Havebrugshistorisk selskab<\/em>, no. 34, 2004, pp. 41\u201352.\">37<\/a><\/sup> Over the course of two centuries, more than 5,000 plant species were moved across continents, given new scientific names, and made part of new cultural and scientific contexts.Kulturstudier<\/em>, no. 2, 2022, pp. 161\u2013184.\">38<\/a><\/sup> Bulbs such as hyacinths and tulips constituted a growing market, and the activities of European explorers and the expanding colonisation of the tropics meant that an increasing number of tropical and subtropical plants made their way to Europe. These were initially cultivated in royal and aristocratic gardens, and later also in botanical gardens. From the late eighteenth century, and especially throughout the nineteenth century, houseplants found their way first into bourgeois homes and subsequently into those of the wider population.Fra Kvang\u00e5rd til Humlekule. Meddelelser fra Havebrugshistorisk selskab<\/em>, no. 40\/41, 2010\/2011, p. 9; Dorte Rhode Nissen:\u00a0houseplant, entry in\u00a0the Danish national encyclopaedia Den Store Danske<\/em>\u00a0at lex.dk: https:\/\/lex.dk\/stueplanter<\/a>, last accessed 5 August 2024; Floris 1999.\">39<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

The history of houseplants has been addressed quite extensively in literature outside of Denmark,Once Upon a Windowsill, <\/em>Timber Press, 1988; Martinsson 2000; Catherine Horwood: Potted History. How Houseplants Took over our Homes<\/em>, Frances Lincoln Limited, 2007; Andreas Stynen: \u2018\u201dUne mode charmante\u201d: Nineteenth\u2010Century Indoor Gardening between Nature and Artifice\u2019, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscape<\/em>s 29, no. 3, 2009, pp. 217\u2013234. DOI: 10.1080\/14601170802201488; Sophie Ruppel: \u2018Houseplants and the Invention of Indoor Gardening\u2019, in Joachim Eibach and Margareth Lanzinger (eds.): The Routledge History of the Domestic Sphere in Europe: 16th to 19th Century<\/em>, Routledge, 2020, pp. 509\u2013529; Penny Sparke: Nature Inside. Plants and Flowers in the Modern Interior<\/em>, Yale University Press, 2020.\">40<\/a><\/sup> while the field is rather more sparingly described in a Danish context.Oldemors potteplanter. Dyrkningsvejledninger og r\u00e5d fra oldemors tid<\/em>, Botanisk Haves Forlag, 1988; Gitte Kidmose R\u00f8n: Potteplanter fra oldemors tid<\/em>, Den Gamle By, 1998; Floris 1999; B\u00e6rentsen 2010\/2011; Nissen, 2000.\">41<\/a><\/sup> Even so, primary sources still offer some insight into the spread of houseplants in the 1820s, when R\u00f8rbye painted his work. The gardener and horticultural writer Julius August Bentzien (1815\u20131882) noted in 1858 that twenty years earlier, in the 1830s, houseplants in windows were not <\/em>a common sight: \u2018Back then one could walk through several streets without seeing flowerpots in any window,\u2019 he wrote.Folkekalender for Danmark<\/em>, vol. 7, Lose og Delbanco\u2019s Forlag, 1858, p. 44.\">42<\/a><\/sup> Indeed, not until 1833 did an actual flower market open in Copenhagen: it did so at Holmens Kanal, where commercial gardeners could sell their potted plants directly to the townspeople.Blomsterelskerne & havesagen. Historien om det kongelige danske haveselskab<\/em>, Haveselskabet, 2005. Skak-Nielsen and other secondary sources list 1834 as the year of the plant market\u2019s opening, but its establishment was in fact announced the year before, in 1833. Ki\u00f8benhavns Kongelig alene privilegerede Adressecomptoirs Efterretninger<\/em>, vol. 75, no. 24, 29 January 1833: \u2018Udsalg af blomstrende potteplanter. Fredagen d. 1rste Februar aabnes et Udsalg af blomstrende Potte-Planter i Boutiken ved Holmens Canal Nr. 257, hvortil de Herrer Gartnere i og om kj\u00f6benhavn frit kunne indlevere blomstrende Potte-Planter i Forhandling\u2019 (Sale of Flowering Potted Plants. On Friday the 1st of February there shall be opened a Sale of Flowering Potted Plants in the Shop at Holmens Canal No. 257, to which Gentlemen Gardeners in and about Copenhagen may freely deliver Flowering Potted Plants for Sale.)\">43<\/a><\/sup> Prior to this, the citizens of Copenhagen had access to ornamental plants via sales from the Botanical Garden at Charlottenborg, from commercial gardeners, or by ordering from catalogues provided by suppliers abroad. In the 1820s, however, such botanical abundance must have been an unusual sight and a status symbol evoking the floral splendour of distant lands.https:\/\/snm.dk\/da\/artikel\/botanisk-haves-historie<\/a>, last accessed March 2025. Regarding the purchase of plants via international mail order, see: Astrid Steffensen: \u2018V\u00e6rk og virke\u2019, in Pernille Leth-Espensen, Gertrud Oelsner and Anette Vands\u00f8 (eds.): Plantefeber: Verden i vindueskarmen, <\/em>Exhibition catalogue, Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2025. Regarding Danish commercial gardeners, see: B\u00e6rentsen 2010\/2011.\">44<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

If we regard the plants as botanical specimens in their own right and ask about their countries of origin, a surprising pattern emerges: on the left-hand side of the window ledge we see a Hydrangea macrophylla<\/em>, native to Japan; in the centre is an Aloe vera, native to Oman on the Arabian Peninsula; and to the right, just before the cutting, a Gomphrena globosa<\/em> (globe amaranth or bachelor\u2019s button), native to Mexico, Central America, and tropical South America.45<\/a><\/sup> The plants in the painting thus hail from different corners of the globe and have come together on a Danish windowsill in the northern hemisphere. Taken as a whole, the windowsill represents all four quarters of the world.<\/p>\n

\"Fig.
Fig. 7. The countries of origin of the plants featured in R\u00f8rbye\u2019s\u00a0View from the Artist\u2019s Window<\/em>. The painting is mirrored to illustrate the point. Graphics: Anette Vands\u00f8.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We do not know whether R\u00f8rbye deliberately arranged the plants to represent the four corners of the world. It is not, however, unlikely. At the time, there was widespread interest in science and botany, especially in the plant geography founded by Alexander von Humboldt (1769\u20131859) in the early nineteenth century.The Invention of Nature, <\/em>John Murray Publishers Ltd, 2016.\">46<\/a><\/sup> In 1822, the Danish botanist and later director of the Botanical Garden, Joachim Frederik Schouw (1789\u20131852), published a Danish plant geography strongly inspired by Humboldt.Grundtr\u00e6k til en almindelig Plantegeographie<\/em>, Den Gyldendalske Boghandlings Forlag, 1822.\">47<\/a><\/sup> It was also during this period that volumes of the extensive\u00a0Flora Danica<\/em>\u00a0(1761\u20131883) were being published on the basis of expeditions across the Danish realm, meaning that the plants described were embedded within a specific geographical context.Flora Danica, <\/em>Lindhardt og Ringhof Forlag A\/S, 2019. During the period 1806 to 1840, issues 22 to 39 are published under the leadership of J.W. Hornemann as editor.\">48<\/a><\/sup> When Bentzien published one of the first Danish handbooks on the care of houseplants in 1851, he likewise included information about the plants\u2019 geographical origins \u2013 and in some cases also about their journey to Europe. He describes, for example, how the botanist Sir Joseph Banks (1743\u20131820) brought the hydrangea to Kew Gardens in London from Japan in 1790, and notes that before its introduction in real life the plant was already known to Europeans from Chinese wallpapers. Hvilke Planter egne sig bedst til Dyrkning i vores Stuer, og hvorledes b\u00f8r vi behandle dem der? <\/em>Copenhagen, 1851, pp. 59-60. In the second edition, 1852, the main title Stuegartneren<\/em> is added.\">49<\/a><\/sup> Regardless of R\u00f8rbye\u2019s intention, this work represents not only the \u2018garden on the windowsill\u2019, but also the wider world given that a global perspective is present in the painting through its plants.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the work also demonstrates an interest in plants collected and placed behind glass in human-made and human-controlled growing environments. The small glass cloche with a cutting underneath it points to a knowledge of plant propagation, including an awareness that tropical and subtropical plants required special conditions in order to thrive. The birdcage, moreover, reflects the wider fascination with exotic \u2018curiosities\u2019 or naturalia in which the interest in plants was often embroiled.Rustic Adornments for Homes of Taste, and Recreations for Town Folk, in the Study and Imitation of Nature<\/em>, Groombridge and Sons, 5, Paternoster Row, 1856. Regarding the interest in natural curiosities in Denmark, see Signe Mellemgaard: \u2018Fra natur til naturalie \u2013 og tilbage igen: Om naturens orden og (u)ordentlige samlingspraksisser i k\u00f8benhavnske naturaliesamlinger i 1700-tallets sidste del\u2019, Kulturstudier<\/em> no. 2, 2014, pp. 65\u201383.\">50<\/a><\/sup> It is therefore natural to view the plants not only as houseplants representing the domestic and the Danish spheres in a narrow sense, but also as specimens exemplifying the wider natural world from which they were drawn.<\/p>\n

The painting is structured by repeated grid patterns: note the gauze curtain whose tassels are doubled in the mirror, the small railing in front of the window echoed in its cast shadow, as well as the birdcage and the ship\u2019s masts in the background. The accumulated effect creates a kaleidoscopic feel that does not, as earlier analyses suggest, establish an opposition between indoors and outdoors, the interior and exterior world, but rather seems to mirror them in each other. Within these myriad reflections, the painting revolves around the technologies that enabled foreign life forms to thrive within the Danish home.51<\/a><\/sup> These include the specific growth environments \u2013 clay pots, birdcage, glass cloche, and the windowsill protected by panes of glass and the small railing \u2013 and the ships themselves. After all, the ships were the technology that enabled the large-scale transfers of plants from distant lands to Europe, and seafaring later became central to the trade in plants.<\/p>\n

Earlier descriptions of the harbour area depicted in the artwork have focused primarily on the view of the naval dockyard with its warships.<\/a>Helsted 1981, Bogh 2016, p. 50.\">52<\/a><\/sup> Yet the middle ground is also of interest: it shows the Copenhagen harbour front, which at the time was heaving with merchant vessels that, among other things, brought ornamental plants, flower bulbs and seeds into the city.Kj\u00f8benhavns<\/em> Kongelig alene privilegerede Adresse-Contoirs Efterretninger<\/em>, vol. 43, no. 320, Wednesday 23 September 1801, p. 6.\">53<\/a><\/sup> In the painting, a smaller merchant ship \u2013 probably a two-topsail schooner \u2013 is moored at the quay behind an anchor and a row of barrels or bundles that may well be cargo.54<\/a><\/sup> The trading companies that transported plant matter such as coffee, sugar and tea to Denmark via long-distance shipping were also located in this area. The West India Warehouse on Toldbodgade, visible in R\u00f8rbye\u2019s view of a Weighing Station at the West India Warehouse<\/em> from 1826, is just to the right of the vista framed by the window.55<\/a><\/sup> Viewing the harbour as a transitional zone pointing out towards faraway, foreign places, as Monrad describes in his analysis of the work, is an obvious interpretation. In our analysis, however, we wish to emphasise that the foreign was not only something one sailed out<\/em> to encounter, but also something that arrived in<\/em> Denmark due to the activities of trade and science.<\/p>\n

Houseplants as an emerging cultural and aesthetic category<\/h2>\n

This analysis opens up new horizons of meaning in R\u00f8rbye\u2019s painting. The plants represent not only the domestic sphere, but also the wider world which entered Europe in the service of science and global trade as part of an imperial and colonial culture. The dynamic movement of the work thus flows not only outward through the open window, but also inward through it. The windowsill emerges as a zone of domestication for plants from other parts of the world, making it a liminal space or contact zone between inside and outside, home and abroad, north and south, where the distant becomes visible within<\/em> the familiar and the everyday.<\/p>\n

According to the French historian of science Bruno Latour, modernity is characterised by a constant production of hybrid nature\u2013culture phenomena.We Have Never Been Modern, <\/em>Harvard University Press, 1993.\">56<\/a><\/sup> The period from the Enlightenment onwards is generally held to be marked by the differentiation of social and epistemological spheres, where nature begins to be understood as something fundamentally separate from society or culture. Latour argues that such a separation never actually took place, a fact proven by the hybrids themselves. The houseplants in R\u00f8rbye\u2019s painting appear precisely as such nature\u2013culture hybrids. They are biological organisms that, by virtue of their specific biology, reflect the ecosystems and climates from which they originate. Yet at the same time they have been collected, transplanted, propagated and adapted to Danish homes through specific technological practices.57<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

The Anthropocene, as Mirzoeff explains, is an aesthetic category, and visual art has taught us to appreciate (and thereby to overlook) Anthropocene transformations. Landscape paintings have aestheticized the monocultures of agriculture and forestry, teaching us to regard them as \u2018beautiful\u2019 and as \u2018Danish\u2019 nature.58<\/a><\/sup> Similarly, one might argue that the many interior paintings of the nineteenth century featuring houseplants contributed to a gradual shift in the perception of plants from distant regions, making observers see them as Danish and as a natural part of a Danish home. Viewed in this light, R\u00f8rbye\u2019s painting not only reflects<\/em> a cultural tendency, but also actively produces<\/em> it through the aesthetic staging of plants as part of a bourgeois Danish interior.<\/p>\n

R\u00f8rbye\u2019s work thus marks the beginning of a visual process of domestication in art that continues throughout the nineteenth century, one in which plants were gradually integrated into a Danish cultural repertoire as they were visually inscribed into bourgeois, and later also rural, homes [Fig. 5]<\/strong>. This development took place concurrently with the practical domestication, commercialisation and often hybridisation of plants by commercial gardeners and florists, as well as with their literary representation in both fiction and the increasingly popular handbooks on houseplant care from the latter half of the century.Constance Ring, <\/em>Gyldendal, 1878 (1885), in which houseplants indicate class, and Johannes V. Larsens J\u00f8rgine<\/em>, in which the myth plays a key part, Johannes V. Larsen: J\u00f8rgine, <\/em>Gyldendal, 1971 (1926). Nineteenth-century books on the care of houseplants include: Julius August Bentzien: Stuegartneren<\/em>, E.L. Thaarup, 1852 (1851); Stephan Nyeland: Blomstervennen, en kortfattet praktisk Vejledning til at dyrke Stueplanter, <\/em>Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, 1890 (1878). Jens August Carl Jenssen: Hjemmets Flora. Vejledning til\u00a0behandling\u00a0af\u00a0potteplanter\u00a0i\u00a0stuen\u00a0alene<\/em>, Gad, 1896 (1883). See also Floris 1999.\">59<\/a><\/sup> By representing the plants within the framework of a home, the artworks also link them to the social categories associated with the domestic sphere. Class, gender, and national identity \u2013 and, with them, Europe\u2019s colonial past \u2013 emerge as key perspectives, which we will explore further in the following analyses.<\/p>\n

Houseplants and class<\/h2>\n
\"Fig.
Fig. 8. . Laurits Andersen Ring: Country Interior<\/em>, Oil on canvas. 39.2 x 44.7 cm. 1880. The Hirschsprung Collection. inv.no. 397. Photo: The Hirschsprung Collection.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The plants in R\u00f8rbye\u2019s window ledge reflect his family\u2019s economic means.60<\/a><\/sup> Bentzien, in his 1858 text, specifically describes R\u00f8rbye\u2019s street, Amaliegade, and clearly regards houseplants as a fashion phenomenon linked to class: \u2018There are plants not fashionable enough to be welcome in the homes of the wealthy and distinguished,\u2019 he writes.61<\/a><\/sup> At the same time, he celebrates the fact that the phenomenon of houseplants had spread across all social classes. Economic resources governed which types of plants were attainable to individuals, just as they did for other consumer goods.Dansk Magasin for bygningskunst og -kultur <\/em>nr. 9:8, 2025.\">62<\/a><\/sup> The pelargonium (often known as a geranium in English) is a particularly interesting example in this respect. It was the height of fashion in the Nordic countries in the first half of the nineteenth century, to such an extent that people spoke of an outright \u2019pelargonium mania.\u201963<\/a><\/sup> Over the course of the nineteenth century, the plant became popular among the common people due to being easily propagated from cuttings.64<\/a><\/sup> It also lent itself well to producing hybrids, giving rise to varieties with different scents, leaf sizes and flower forms. These hybrids became part of the expanding flower trade \u2013 and remain so today.65<\/a><\/sup> Subsequently, however, the pelargonium lost its prestige, almost becoming a symbol of the common folk, as we see in art \u2013 for example, in many of Laurits Andersen Ring\u2019s depictions of rural life [Fig. 8].<\/strong><\/p>\n

A good example is Ring\u2019s painting A Farm Boy Doing his Homework<\/em> (1883), in which two pelargoniums (Pelargonium sp.<\/em>) are placed in the window [Fig. 9]<\/strong>. In this work, the rustic wooden table, the coarsely woven clothing, the clay-daubed and cracked walls, the pelargoniums in turned clay pots on the window ledge, and the descriptive title all serve to draw us into a peasant household of the 1880s. Here too, the windowsill serves as a boundary zone separating inside and outside. The home is presented as an educational environment: the boy has Martin Luther\u2019s (1483\u20131546) Small Catechism<\/em> on the table, turned so that the viewer can easily see its title page. Yet the boy, looking on the verge of jumping to his feet, seems more intent on gazing out \u2013 perhaps at the birds in the bush outside \u2013 than on his lessons.66<\/a><\/sup> The pelargoniums obscure the view and appear as a cultivated form of nature, a contrast to the free nature beyond the window. Given that Ring, like many other painters, would actively stage and rearrange his subject matter, his works cannot be read as one-to-one depictions of reality.L.A. Ring \u2013 Mellem Lys og m\u00f8rke<\/em>. Exhibition catalogue, Charlottenlund: Ordrupgaard, 2016, p. 57.\">67<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0They do, however, offer us some impression of the way houseplants were regarded at the time.<\/p>\n

\"Fig.9.
Fig. 9. Laurits Andersen Ring: A Farm Boy Doing his Homework<\/em>. Oil on canvas. 60 x 47.1 cm. 1883. Private collection. Photo: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The colonial narratives of houseplants<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Like the kaleidoscopic pattern of reflections in R\u00f8rbye\u2019s work, houseplants in nineteenth-century art seem to destabilise the scenes in which they appear because they open up a multitude of supplementary perspectives. One of the most frequently found plants in our material is the pelargonium, presenting the rich variety characteristic of the species. The pelargonium originates in South Africa. In the mid-seventeenth century, Dutch traders established a colony in the region, one which expanded during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries under both Dutch and British rule, a process involving the importation of enslaved people from other regions and the displacement or extermination of parts of the indigenous population. Dutch traders brought the first pelargonium species to Europe in the seventeenth century.68<\/a><\/sup> Like many other plants collected from other parts of the world, it was given scientific names in order to be integrated into the botanical taxonomic system,Kulturstudier<\/em> 2, 2022, pp. 161\u2013184; Lucile H. Brockway: Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Garden<\/em>, Yale University Press, 2002; James Delburgo: Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum<\/em>, Belknap Press, 2019.\">69<\/a><\/sup> because houseplants are not only nature\u2013culture hybrids: they are also cultural hybrids belonging simultaneously to several cultures, each with its own perspective on, name for, and use of the plants. In South Africa, for example, the pelargonium was used both as food and as medicine.70<\/a><\/sup> In this way, plants challenge the idea of a stable, unequivocal national identity from within their domestic settings, pointing instead to the complex, often invisible connections between Danish interiors and the \u2013 frequently colonised \u2013 world that supplied its green inhabitants. The windowsill thus becomes a special site for the negotiation, inscription or articulation of hybrid identities.The Location of Culture,<\/em> Routledge, 1994, see for example pp. 37\u201340.\">71<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

At first glance, the windowsill in Ring\u2019s work appears as an emblem of a Denmark we might look back on with nostalgia and perhaps revisit in museums such as Den Gamle By. The casement windows are typical of older Danish homes. The Small Catechism<\/em> speaks of the efforts made to ensure that even peasants would learn to read and learn about Christianity in Danish. The pelargonium contributes to establishing the strong sense of Danishness in the paintings, since it was such a characteristic houseplant among the common folk in nineteenth-century culture.Nordic Journal of Aesthetics<\/em> 33: 69, 2025 (in print).\">72<\/a><\/sup> Conversely, paintings of this type helped establish the view of the plant itself as typically Danish.<\/p>\n

Yet alongside stories of class, national identity, plant trade and plant exchanges, the pelargonium also carries Europe\u2019s colonial history with it onto the windowsill and onto the picture plane. Ring\u2019s work does not necessarily directly invite these supplementary perspectives, but one may choose to inject this knowledge of plants into one\u2019s reading of the paintings, thereby seeing them as testimonies to Europe\u2019s colonial past.<\/p>\n

Houseplants and gender<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"Fig
Fig. 10. Title page from Jens August Carl Jenssen: Hjemmets Flora. <\/em>Vejledning til behandling af potteplanter i stuen alene<\/em> [The Flora of the Home: A Guide to the Care of Pot Plants in the Living Room], Gad, 1896 (1883).<\/figcaption><\/figure>A final significant perspective on plants is the question of gender and care work. In our project we consider houseplants as botanical beings in their own right, which makes the issue of their care central. Quite concretely, this raises the question of who tends them and sustains their life in pots \u2013 vessels that, by their very nature, make such care necessary. Over the course of the nineteenth century, plants became domesticated, thereby moving into the gendered sphere of the home where they became part of women\u2019s responsibilities and labour.The Hothouse Flower. Nurturing Women in the Victorian Conservatory<\/em>, Brighton, Edvard Everett Publishers, 2020.\">73<\/a><\/sup> Indeed, the illustrations on the title pages of several plant manuals published in the latter half of the nineteenth century, offering instructions on the care of houseplants, clearly reflect the assumption that they would be looked after by women [Fig. 10].<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Many other sources frame plants as part of women\u2019s care work in the home. For example, the publication Raadgiver for Hus og Hjem<\/em> (Advice on House and Home, 1885) observes that a loving and good housewife will tend her flowers as she does her children and will \u2018reap rich rewards for doing so\u2019, emphasising that this need not cost anything since cuttings are easily obtained from friends and acquaintances.Raadgiver for Hus og Hjem paa Land og I By. Gratis F\u00f8lgeblad til \u2019Illustreret Familiejournal<\/em>\u2019, Allers Forlag, vol. 1, 1885, p. 51. See also Floris 1999, p. 57.\">74<\/a><\/sup> Women were thus expected to acquire practical knowledge of plants, knowledge no longer reserved for gardeners, and their management of good taste within the home was not simply a matter of style, but also of acquiring botanical or horticultural expertise. Within the home, a mutual exchange was at play: the woman tended the plants, which in return adorned the household, conferring status and added comfort.Matters of Care. Speculative Ethics in More than Human Worlds,<\/em> Minnesota University Press, 2017.\">75<\/a><\/sup> In this way, plants contributed to the construction of the housewife as an ideal; a process that unfolded during the nineteenth century as the bourgeois nuclear family became the norm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In Viggo Pedersen\u2019s (1854\u20131926) depiction of an everyday scene set in a sun-drenched living room, we witness a tender encounter between the artist\u2019s wife, Elisabeth, and their child, Christen. The mother is seated on the floor, tilting her head attentively as she listens to the child, who reaches trustingly towards his mother\u2019s face [Fig. 11]<\/strong>. Illuminated by a light that carries an almost religious quality, mother and child form the central subject of the work. Six houseplants stand on the windowsill, relegated to a peripheral background role; they are even cropped so that only their pots and lower stems remain visible. Like the sewing by the window, or the clutter on the floor and on the escritoire, the plants belong to the sphere of the housewife\u2019s duties. Positioned directly in the fall of sunlight, they filter and refract the light, and their lush, healthy foliage \u2013 together with their sheer abundance \u2013 testify, like the child himself, to the life that the mother nurtures within the domestic sphere.<\/p>\n

\"Fig.
Fig. 11. Viggo Pedersen: Sunshine in the Living Room. The Artist\u2019s Wife and Child<\/em>. 1888. Oil on canvas. 35.5 \u00d7 45.5 cm, 1888. SMK\/National Gallery of Denmark. Inv. no. KMS1363.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Women and houseplants shared similar circumstances during this period: both were confined to the private sphere of the home. This was before women won the right to vote, and a time when married women were barred from holding business licences.https:\/\/danmarkshistorien.lex.dk\/N%C3%A6ringsfrihedsloven,_29._december_1857<\/a>\">76<\/a><\/sup> In the nineteenth century, women were also denied entry to the art academies. They had to make do with private tuition, where flowers and interiors were among the primary subjects.Dansk Guldalder. Verdenskunst mellem to katastrofer<\/em>. Exhibition catalogue, Copenhagen: Statens Museum for Kunst, pp. 47\u201348.\">77<\/a><\/sup> Women artists such as Alhed Larsen (1872\u20131927), Anna Syberg (1870\u20131914), Anna Ancher (1859\u20131935), and Christine Swane (1876\u20131960) painted the very plants they themselves tended in their homes, adding new layers to the narrative of care visible in these works [Fig. 11]<\/strong>.78<\/a><\/sup> Despite the labour involved in tending plants on windowsills, in greenhouses and gardens, art historian S\u00f8ren Thorlak Madsen points out that the plants in these works seem to represent a sanctuary, a space for retreating from other forms of care work.79<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0Perhaps this is why women artists often chose houseplants as their main subject matter? [Fig. 12]<\/strong><\/p>\n

A source of new insight and renewed relevance<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The close readings presented in this article demonstrate the richness of meaning that can be found when you cut across disciplinary silos and analyse the art through multiple perspectives spanning the natural sciences and the humanities alike. For example, our analyses are supported by botanical, horticultural, ethnobotanical and cultural-historical studies and perspectives. Such analyses can reveal overlooked aspects in well-known works, especially those that concern the entanglements of human and plant life. This interdisciplinary approach can inscribe older works within a present-day perspective, allowing historical art to be considered in relation to both contemporary art and current issues \u2013 thereby honing the relevance of the collections found in Danish art museums.<\/p>\n

\"Fig.12.
Fig. 12. Alhed Larsen: Cactus Flower<\/em>. 1910. Oil on canvas. 56 x 40 cm. Faaborg Museum. Inv. no. 457. Photo: Faaborg Museum \/ Anders Hoby.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A plant-centred approach to art, alternating between close and distant readings and between diachronic and synchronic perspectives, can thus provide new knowledge about \u2013 and new means of presenting and mediating \u2013 our relationship to plants. The works offer insights into the concrete entanglements of human and plant life within the domestic sphere as they unfolded throughout the nineteenth century. The genre of \u2018houseplant art\u2019 shows how plants came to play a role in social categories such as gender, class and nationality. It also illustrates how plants linked the intimate, domestic Danish sphere with global structures such as colonialism and transnational trade, thereby connecting social, cultural, botanical and economic aspects from widely different parts of the world. None of these topics have been examined extensively with Danish houseplants as a point of departure. Future studies might profitably look at broader bodies of work in this light, conducting similar analyses in order to nuance, confirm, or challenge such theses through the use of the database. Also, the database itself may generate new hypotheses requiring further close analysis.<\/p>\n

Moreover, houseplant art can provide a framework for new forms of public engagement, offering a collective sensitivity towards plants through exhibitions and other interpretive formats. \u2018Plant blindness\u2019 is a widespread phenomenon, particularly in relation to houseplants sold purely for their aesthetic qualities \u2013 a narrow view that obscures broader understandings of them as botanical nature\u2013culture hybrids.Why look at plants? The Botanical Emergence in Contemporary Art, <\/em>Critical Plant Studies series vol. 5, Brill, 2019, p. 134.\">80<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Houseplant art has the advantage of being relatable, since it depicts intimate portrayals of plants within domestic settings that are very similar to the ways we cultivate plants in our homes today. Thus, the plant motif can give otherwise abstract ideas about the entanglement of human and plant life concrete form. Audiences can gain greater knowledge and a broader aesthetic appreciation of how human and plant lives intertwine on a large, macrosociological scale and <\/em>on the microsociological scale of the home, whether a peasant household in Jutland or an artist\u2019s childhood home in central Copenhagen. The motif also quite literally brings the Anthropocene\u2019s global questions concerning the relationship between humans and nature down to earth, grounding it in everyday, relatable perspectives as plants forge a link between the intimate sensory world of the home and wider global contexts.<\/p>\n

Through houseplant art, museums can make distant and complex issues accessible and relatable. They can serve as forums for inclusive conversations in which visitors encounter new planthroposcene perspectives on the houseplants they see in art and on their own windowsills. The works may prompt curiosity and perhaps inspire audiences to seek knowledge about the plants they encounter, whether in paintings or at home, perhaps asking about their origins, how they ended up on the windowsill, and who tends to them. Such enrichment<\/em> of the audience\u2019s outlook on plants may counteract the apathy towards global environmental challenges that many warn against.Planet\u00e6re Frakturer, <\/em>Multivers, 2022. Regarding climate fatigue, see: Per Esben Stoknes: What We Think About when We Try not to Think About Global Warming<\/em>, Green Publishing Co, 2015.\">81<\/a><\/sup> This is one of the core ideas behind the exhibition Plant Fever. The World on the Windowsill<\/em>, opening in September 2025 at The Hirschsprung Collection and Ordrupgaard, and in 2026 at Faaborg Museum as part of the project Hidden Plant Stories.82<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Museums can use their collections to tell new stories about the evolution of our relationship to plants in the home: plants being collected, propagated, cultivated and enjoyed within the domestic sphere. Plants with which the Danish people developed an intimate relationship by tending them, sharing them with friends and family, reading about them and painting them. These may be planthroposcene stories about intimacy, but also about power relations: between humans and plants, between the Global North and South, between colonial powers and colonised regions. At a time when our future with plants is being fundamentally reconsidered, it is worth looking back at our past with plants \u2013 and at the period of transformation when the houseplant emerged as a new cultural category.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“How can nineteenth-century houseplant art shed new light on the relationship between humans and plants? A plant-centred approach opens up overlooked narratives within art museum collections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6021,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHidden Plant Stories: Close and distant readings of houseplants in Danish art 1820\u20131920 - Perspective<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.perspectivejournal.dk\/en\/skjulte-plantehistorier-naer-og-fjernlaesninger-af-dansk-kunst-med-stueplanter-fra-1820-til-1920-som-kilde-til-ny-viden-og-formidling\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hidden Plant Stories: Close and distant readings of houseplants in Danish art 1820\u20131920 - Perspective\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\""How can nineteenth-century houseplant art shed new light on the relationship between humans and plants? 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