Coastal view with steep hills.

Coastal View with Steep Hills by Laurits Tuxen, dated around 1900, shows the Danish royal painter turning to landscape study as a private exercise alongside his major commissioned works. Tuxen, who spent his career producing grand ceremonial portraits of European royalty — he painted Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebration and the coronation of Nicholas II — maintained a parallel practice of smaller, more intimate studies of the natural world. Coastal landscapes offered him relief from the formal demands of court portraiture, and such views also show his close observation of light and atmosphere along the Danish or Norwegian shore.

Tuxen approaches the landscape with a lighter, more spontaneous touch than his formal portraits, using broad strokes to suggest the mass of the cliffs and the movement of water below. The palette is dominated by cool greens and greys, modulated by warm ochres where rock faces catch direct light.