Works by Michael Ancher
73 works · 112 ms
Michael Ancher settled in Skagen, a fishing village far up in northern Jutland, after a first visit in 1874, and is widely known for his pictures of its fishermen and their dramas at sea.
The Lifeboat is Taken through the Dunes, from 1883, gives ordinary fishermen the leading parts that history painting kept for heroes: a crowd in sou'westers and oilskins follows a horse-drawn boat through snow towards a ship in trouble. The man at the right edge, cut by the frame as in a snapshot, shouts to someone out of sight. A year earlier Ancher painted the chief lifeboatman Lars Kruse, his name lettered above a black fur hat and yellow oilskin.
In 1880 he married Anna Brøndum, a painter from Skagen whose father owned Brøndums Hotel. The marriage introduced him to the naturalist idea of rendering reality and its colours plainly, which he joined to the strict composition he had learnt at the academy. Portrait of my wife, from 1884, shows her in profile at a doorway in a long dark dress, a pale dog looking up at her from the threshold.
Sources: Wikipedia, SMK – National Gallery of Denmark, Skagens Museum, Hirschsprung Collection.
