Elisabeth Fabritius, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Michael Ancher no. 132.

Provenance: Bruun Rasmussen auction 486, 1986 no. 16, ill. p. 21. Bruun Rasmussen auction 737, 2004 no. 2057, ill. p. 62. Bruun Rasmussen auction 747, 2005 no. 1048, ill. p. 47.

The meeting between the two young people in the doorway dates from the period 1877–78 when Michael Ancher's production was limited. Ancher painted pictures of folk life like this, with a touch of the Golden Age and National Romanticism in the early years of his career. At the same time, he worked on large portraits, but also carried out more realistic studies that point towards the modern trends of the 1880s. From the second half of the 1870s, several pictures of folk life are known, in which the Skagen youth is at the center, such as “En forlovelse ved aften i en fiskerhytte” (An engagement in the evening in a fisherman's cabin) from 1876 and “Fiskeren der skal ud paa Fangst, tager Afsked med sin Førstefødte” (The fisherman going out fishing says goodbye to his first-born) from 1878 (Elisabeth Fabritius, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of Michael Ancher no. 83 and no. 127). The latter was painted in the same year as the present painting and seems to pick up the thread from the understated courtship scene: here another young couple has reached a step further on the path of life, as the fisherman says goodbye to his young wife and child. Both the courtship and farewell scenes take place in doorways, which on a very concrete level have given Ancher the opportunity to work with exciting lighting effects, but which probably also have symbolic significance as thresholds for development and the future.