Redningsbåden køres gennem klitterne

The fishermen of Skagen haul a lifeboat through snow-covered dunes toward a sailing ship in distress on the horizon, the vessel heeling so far over that the force of the wind is plain. In oilskins, sou’westers and fur caps, they labour toward a rescue the picture never shows; one man, cropped by the edge of the canvas, shouts to someone outside it. Michael Ancher settled in Skagen and married the painter Anna Ancher, and he used the town’s fishermen as his models and made them the protagonists of a modern kind of history painting, in which ordinary working people take the place that mythological heroes once held. Two crossing diagonals carry the eye from the foreground out to the wreck, and the abrupt cropping and the shout directed past the viewer give the canvas the immediacy of a reportage photograph. The museum acquired the picture in 1883, the year it was painted. The painting is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).