A glade with an old oak tree and some deer.

Carl Frederik Aagaard's 'A Glade with an Old Oak Tree and Some Deer' (1889) is a combination of landscape and animal subject that placed him in the tradition of Danish forest and deer painting. The old oak tree as a specific arboreal subject — with its associations of age, permanence, and natural majesty — provided a different kind of forest subject from the uniform young beech forests he more typically depicted. The deer within the glade added the traditional pastoral and hunting associations to the landscape subject.

Aagaard renders the glade with its ancient oak with attention to the specific quality of light that enters through the clearing — the contrast between the dense woodland around the glade and the more open, directly illuminated space within it creating the atmospheric character. The old oak's distinctive form (the massive trunk, the spreading canopy, the gnarled character that distinguishes ancient trees from younger growth) is depicted with the observational care that subjects of natural dignity deserve. The deer provide natural animation within the landscape.