Fiskere på Skagens strand

Along the wide, pale strand at Skagen a group of fishermen are resting in the low evening light: one stretched out on the sand, a second propped on an elbow, a third standing with his back to us looking out over the water, while a boat lies drawn up on the beach beyond them. P.S. Krøyer (1851–1909) had come north to Skagen in 1882, and the meeting of Danish and Scandinavian painters he found there became the most celebrated artists’ colony in the Nordic countries; this canvas, painted on the spot in 1883 and signed in his own hand “SKrøyer Skagen -83”, is one of its earliest monuments. The wide empty beach, the low horizon and the long, level light of the northern summer evening were the motifs he and his friend Michael Ancher made central to Danish art, and they are already fully formed here. The painting is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.