Oxen doing threshing at Civita d'Antino

'Oxen Doing Threshing at Civita d'Antino,' painted by Peter Hansen in 1904, documents a practice observed during the Danish painter's extended Italian sojourn. Civita d'Antino, a small Abruzzo village, had attracted Scandinavian and German painters since the mid-nineteenth century as a site of picturesque rural survival—agricultural practices unchanged since antiquity, simple stone architecture, and vivid Mediterranean light. Hansen made extended working visits, and this threshing scene records a specific practice—oxen treading grain on an outdoor threshing floor—that was genuinely ancient in its method. Ordrupgaard holds the work in its Danish collection.

Hansen renders the oxen and threshing scene with the direct plein-air observation of a painter working in strong Italian sunlight. The warm ochres of the threshing floor, the greys and browns of the oxen, and the vivid Mediterranean sky create a palette distinct from his Scandinavian subjects.