By James Brewer
A headland where the waters of two great seas – the North Sea and the Baltic – collide has always been a dangerous locale for navigation.
Hans Christian Andersen wrote of the peninsula in A Story from the Sand Dunes that the roaring of the North Sea could be heard for miles inland. The dunes are strewn with numerous shipwrecks.
The site has a sensational attractiveness, though. A cascade of luminous effects generated by its remarkable marine geography is the inspiration for the dazzling paintings of many artists, notably Anna Ancher (1859–1935), one of Denmark’s most lauded. Her prominent contributions show domestic interiors glowingly transformed by the piercing outdoors light.
In the first UK exhibition devoted to this gifted practitioner, Anna Ancher: Painting Light, Dulwich Picture Gallery tells how she became one the most important and innovative artists in Danish history. She was one of the few women of her era to achieve widespread recognition in that field. For her hushed scenes, this painter of everyday life has been compared to Vermeer.
A low-key but determined figure, Anna grew up in the fishing village of Skagen with its yellow houses that is perched on the headland. The community, despite being in the path of fierce storms, happily celebrates the glorious quality of light at its summer best which has induced visual art to flourish.
The rough, blue-green Skagerrak, the strait between Denmark and Norway, clashes with the calmer Kattegat, the bay between Denmark and Sweden, channelling intense, shimmering light over dunes and heathland. At twilight the sea and sky form an optical illusion known as “the Blue Hour.”
Anna Ancher (née Brøndum) was a central figure in the Scandinavian ‘Modern Breakthrough’ movement and the Skagen Painters, a community of artists who settled in the village.
Skagen in her day could be reached only by the horse-drawn coach that met a train or boat at the ferry port of Frederikshavn. Despite the location’s seclusion from mainstream Denmark, Anna fulfilled her ambition to study art, gained a place at a leading art school in Copenhagen, and later in life was stimulated by visiting displays elsewhere in Europe.
She agreed with Andersen, the master of fairy tales, plays, novels and poetry, that painters would find endless motivation from Skagen. Fortunately, her mother, Ane Brøndum, had aspiration for her children and in 1875 supported her 15-year-old daughter’s decision to enrol for study in the school for women in Copenhagen run by the romantic landscape painter Vilhelm Kyhn (1819-1903).
We see in the 40 paintings exhibited at the Dulwich gallery her unfailing passion for the potential of the play of natural light. Through her eye-catching use of colour, and ability to capture the revelatory phases of light, Anna offered a fresh perspective on the art of the period.
Many items are on loan from Copenhagen’s Hirschsprung Collection and the eponymous Skagens Museum. Several of her best-known masterpieces are brought into the light for new audiences outside Denmark, and these are supplemented by rarely seen studies recently discovered in Anna’s home.
Among her best-known works has been The Maid in the Kitchen (1883-1886). It has an echo of Vermeer in so far as it is a portrait of a servant. The maid is shown from the back, preparing food in the small, sparsely equipped kitchen. Sunlight enters to turn what is perhaps a makeshift thin curtain yellow and creates the same colouration on the wall. Is the maid viewed in this homespun atmosphere in her dark clothing with her back to us seen from this angle because she is a ‘lower-class’ servant? Or is the composition simply to make her a counterpoint to the light?
Contrast the maid’s picture with the idyllic serenity of A Girl in the Garden in Summertime. Skagen, from1914, where the gilded young subject and her flower-filled surroundings and even a patch of the trees are bathed in full-frontal light.
Everywhere, light was in her paintbrush. In Sunlight in the Blue Room (1891), it bursts in through the windows of a private room in Brøndum’s hotel where Anna’s daughter Helga is concentrating on her knitting. Diagonals on the wall and carpet heighten the techniques in which Anna’s genius lay.
Unlike other Skagen Painters, Anna was intimately involved in the town – a golden thread to local people who featured frequently as her models. The value of this connection started early: in Old Man Whittling Sticks (1880) Anna portrayed a fisherman absorbed in his craft. She submitted the painting to the spring exhibition at the Charlottenborg gallery, Copenhagen, one of the most important events in the Danish art calendar, and that gave her a flying start.
That showed her genius for weaving magic from quotidian scenes. Almost every picture reveals a deep insight into her method and language.
Her investigation of light was unwavering as she sought to record its effects at different times of day, often the same subject repeatedly with subtle variations.
The Girls’ Sewing School in Skagen was a favourite haunt . Two little girls being taught how to sew, c. 1902, is an example of the repetition of familiar motifs and subjects. Anna here concentrates on the pattern created by light falling from the right of the picture, and the shadows created by the slender plant decorating the room.
Anna was fascinated by people at work, including agricultural workers, as in Harvesters (1905), where a man and two women proceed resolutely through the ripe, strikingly yellow corn.
For a long time, Anna Ancher was regarded primarily as a painter of interiors; but in 2014 at her former home a large collection of oil studies was discovered, many of which record the distinctive, rugged scenery of Skagen.
Some of her landscapes focus on religious rituals or events but she was not intensely devout. A Field Sermon (1903) – this time the sunlight was kept to the distance – has been interpreted as illustrating the confrontation between tradition and modernity
Anna was the most successful female artist in Denmark in her time. The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art was closed to women until 1888, and after that on unequal terms with men. After she and Michael Acher married in 1880, and she had given birth to her daughter Helga three years later, her former tutor Vilhem Kyhn advised her to hurl her portable painting box into the sea. Although this sounds hurtful and chauvinistic, one wonders whether Kyhn meant this in jest. He obviously appreciated her talent, and he taught more than 75 women during his career. She painted his portrait, including in 1903 of him smoking his pipe.
Kyhn’s remark did not put her off. With the support of her family – it was ideal to have mother at hand to help with household duties – she continued painting and exhibited year after year. With a scholarship from the Academy, Anna and Michael from Christmas 1888 spent six months in Paris, where she absorbed elements of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
Michael and Anna settled in what would become ‘Anchers Hus’ in 1884, expanded the building by adding a studio annexe in 1913. Helga Ancher bequeathed her parents’ home and studio, its interiors and the art collection to a foundation bearing her name. In 1967 it was opened to the public as a museum.
Helga (1883–1964) when a child appeared in many paintings by her parents, and by other artists. Early in life Helga was keen to follow the footsteps of her parents, becoming a student of Copenhagen-born Valdemar Irminger and of Viggo Johansen, a member of the Skagen Painters. In 1909-1910, she studied with Lucien Simon (1861–1945) and Émile-René Ménard (1862–1930) at their noted art school in Paris.
Dulwich curator Helen Hillyard said: “Unlike many female painters of her generation, Anna Ancher was never ‘lost’ to art history. Nevertheless, she has not yet received the international recognition that she deserves. Her works are so captivating, you cannot help but be drawn into her world.”
The exhibition includes a small selection of works by Anna’s contemporaries: Marie Luplau (1848-1925), Emilie Mundt (1842-1922), Marie Sandholdt (1872-1942), and Louise Bonfils (1856-1933). These works are loaned by the author and broadcaster, Sandi Toksvig, who champions art by Danish women.
Anna Ancher: Painting Light is curated by Helen Hillyard in partnership with Skagens Museum. Accompanying the exhibition is an illustrated catalogue with newly commissioned essays by Helen Hillyard and Mette Harbo Lehmann, curator, Skagens Museum.
Lisette Vind Ebbesen, director of Skagens Museum, declared: “It’s a great pleasure for us to collaborate with Dulwich Picture Gallery on this Anna Ancher exhibition. We consider her to be one of the most important Danish painters of her time – and so did her contemporaries. Her colours, motifs and style resembled none of them, and they still seem unique and fresh so many years later. We believe she has much to offer the world and are very excited to contribute to the first UK showing of Anna Ancher.”
Images:
A Girl in the Garden in Summertime. Skagen, 1914. By Anna Ancher. Image courtesy of Skagens Museum.
The Maid in the Kitchen, 1883-86. By Anna Ancher. Oil on canvas, Courtesy of the Hirschsprung Collection.
Sunlight in the Blue Room, 1891. Oil on canvas. By Anna Ancher. Image courtesy of Skagens Museum.
Two little girls being taught how to sew, c. 1902. By Anna Ancher. Oil on canvas. Skagens Museum.
Anna Ancher in a studio. Photo by Anna Knudstrup (1884-1959). Skagens Museum.
Anna and Michael Ancher in the door to the Studio, collodion or gelatin print, 1890s. Skagens Museum.
A Field Sermon, 1903. Oil on canvas. By Anna Ancher. Courtesy of Skagens Museum.
The Harvesters, 1905. By Anna Ancher. Oil on canvas. Image courtesy of Skagens Museum.
Anna Ancher: Painting Light is at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, until March 8, 2026.
