A scenery from the river at Odense.

H. A. Brendekilde's 'A Scenery from the River at Odense' (1889) depicts the Odense River that ran through the capital of Funen — the city of Hans Christian Andersen's birth, whose river had been both a working waterway and a scenic feature of the town since the medieval period. Brendekilde's Odense river subject brought his Danish naturalist approach to a subject of specific local and cultural significance, the river that had shaped the experience of one of Denmark's most celebrated cultural figures.

Brendekilde renders the Odense river with his characteristic atmospheric sensitivity — the specific quality of the river's light and the surrounding urban or semi-natural landscape creating the composition's atmospheric unity. His handling of the river's reflections, the vegetation along its banks, and the quality of the Funen light gives the subject its specific Danish character distinct from his coastal or rural landscape subjects.