Great Work: Mønsted’s Wooded path by a river

In 1894, the Danish painter Peder Mørk Mønsted gave himself an impossible task. He wanted to paint sunlight in a forest.

The problem is that forest light never holds still. It lands on one leaf and skips the next. It glimmers off water until a cloud passes by. To paint a scene like this, Mønsted had to understand how every piece of light behaved, then set each one down by hand, in oil.

The result is Wooded path by a river.

He didn’t paint a majestic mountain or a grand cathedral. He painted a dirt path by the water, the kind most of us walk past every day without a second thought. The beauty was there for anyone to see. Mønsted was simply the one who stopped long enough to notice it.

Great Work starts with seeing what everyone else walks past.