Lersøen. Landscape near the road Tagensvej. Study.

Lersøen was a lake and wetland area on the northern outskirts of Copenhagen, running beside the road Tagensvej — a workaday stretch of suburban and semi-rural ground that would have seemed an unlikely subject for a painter. Ring's practice of making studies from unpromising locations in 1903 was deliberate: he rejected the picturesque in favour of the plain, finding in the fringe zones between city and countryside a melancholy authenticity. Lersøen was subsequently drained and built over, making Ring's records of it a document of vanished landscape as much as finished art. The designation 'Study' in the title signals his intention to capture fleeting conditions directly from nature.

The palette is subdued, built from greens, grey-browns, and the pale glint of water through vegetation. Thin, calligraphic strokes define the reeds and grasses at the water's edge, while the broader passages of earth and sky are laid in with more confident, sweeping marks.