Hills with lyme grass at Enø. Sunshine.

Painted in 1903 at the narrow peninsula of Enø on the south coast of Zealand, this canvas captures the windswept lyme-grass hills under strong sunlight. Enø was known for its dune landscape and its long, exposed shoreline, and the lyme grass — a coastal plant whose deep roots bind shifting sand — gave the scene both visual texture and ecological specificity. Ring spent long periods in coastal areas of Denmark at this time, developing a practice of painting en plein air with scrupulous attention to the exact quality of northern light on a particular day. The work belongs to a sustained series of studies of the Danish coast in changing weather.

Sunlight is rendered through warm, broken yellows and pale greens that contrast with the cooler shadows between grass clumps. The sky is given considerable weight in the composition, its clouds modelled with confident strokes that echo the rolling rhythm of the grass below.