| Church-Goers Arriving by Boat at the Parish Church of Leksand on Siljan Lake | |
| Other Language 1: | Danish |
| Artist: | Wilhelm Marstrand |
| Medium: | oil on canvas |
| Height Metric: | 130.5 |
| Width Metric: | 215 |
| Metric Unit: | cm |
| Imperial Unit: | in |
| City: | Copenhagen |
| Museum: | Danish National Gallery |
Church-Goers Arriving by Boat at the Parish Church of Leksand on Siljan Lake, Sweden (Danish: Kirkefærd i Dalarne i Sverige. Til Leksands sognekirke i Dalarne kommer folket i deres store kirkebåde over Siljansøen om søndagen til gudstjeneste), is an oil on canvas painting by Wilhelm Marstrand. It is in the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.
On 8 June 1850, Marstrand was married to Margrethe Christine Weidemann (1824-1867) in Frederiksberg Church. The ongoing First Schleswig War made it impossible to travel south on their honeymoon. On the recommendation of Hans Christian Andersen, a friend of Marstrand, they chose instead to go to Dalarna in Sweden.
Back from his honeymoon, Marstrand received a commission from C.- A. Thomsen for a large painting of this scene for the Danish National Gallery. In his book I Sverige (1851), Andersen had described the colourful tableau with the church-goers:[1]
In July 1851, Marstrand therefore returned to Lake Siljan. In Leksand, he created numerous preparatory sketches for the large painting. It was completed in early 1853.[2] The painting was ready for the opening of the annual Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition on 31 March 1853.[3]In Wilhelm Marstrand – A cosmopolitan artist caught in a vortex of images (2020), Jesper Svenningsen has described the painting as a highlight in Marstrand's production. He observes: "In contrast to virtually all of Marstrand’s earlier depictions of life, he chose here to eschew anecdote and suppress any urge to caricature or beautify. Instead, he has chosen a panoramic scene and gone on to orchestrate the crowd with a tautness of composition more reminiscent of a battle scene than of a rural population assembling on a perfectly ordinary Sunday morning."[4]