Kyhnsminde (Kyhn's Memorial)

Intro

During the last 30 years of his life, the painter Vilhelm Kyhn spent all his summer holidays in Ry, and after his death, Doctor Kristen Isager sat up this monument in memory of Vilhelm Kyhn.

Kyhn lived from 1819 to 1903, and was an outsider and pioneer on the Danish art acene. Among other things he established the “Huleakademiet” (“The Den Academy”) which lead to the formation of the The Artists’ Independent Studio Schools (Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler). He also operated the Painting School for Women (“Tegneskolen for Kvinder”), which was attended by Anna Ancher amongst others. His motifs were the Danish landscape, but not in the tradional sense. He was a national romantic, influenced by the ideas of the Danish philosopher, Grundtvig, and he observed nature the year round. He studied the same motif in different lights, painted random sections, and eventually he disengaged himself from the academic mastery of the landscape. He let people and their houses conform as minor parts of the whole. From 1873, Kyhn took up permanent summer residence in Ry, where a group of painters gathered around him, with Harald Foss and Pauline Thomsen in the lead. In 1904 – one year after the death of Vilhelm Kyhn – the Ry Artisan and Citizen Association opened the vantage point here at Lynghoved to the public, and six years later the monument was set up.