Despite the title, Boy with a Cod is not one of Hansen’s typical genre scenes of fishermen in which large figures dominated. The boy is small in scale and the cod not easily discernible. The painting is a seascape in which the figure of a boy merely serves to direct the viewer’s gaze beyond the boats into the wide expanse of ocean and sky. Hansen was best known for his dramatic, stormy marines, but, as Boy with a Cod demonstrates, he was equally skilled in capturing the more delicate and serene aspects of nature. The soft, grayish tones of blue and green are characteristic of the palette he established early on, and such color symphonies enabled the artist to capture the atmospheric conditions and mood of the coast on a cold afternoon. His practice of posing the figure in the open air no doubt encouraged the direct, fresh brushwork.
