Provenance: Acquired by the present owner's father, scenographer Peter Høimark (1937–2004), around 1986 when he was visiting an old fisherman's home in Skagen while he was doing the initial research in connection with the production of the film “Hip Hip Hurray” (1987). The painting was part of a panel in an old infill door, which the fisherman said he had acquired from Krøyer's house many years ago. Peter Høimark acquired the door in exchange for a new door and a lunch for the fisherman and his friends at Brøndum's Hotel.

The present painting is a study for one of Peder Severin Krøyer's most famous works “Sankt Hans-blus på Skagen strand” (Midsummer Eve bonfire on Skagen's beach), dated 1906, with the dimensions 150×257 cm (deposited at The Art Museums of Skagen (DEP5)).

Peder Severin Krøyer's idea of portraying his friends from Skagen around a bonfire at Midsummer’s Eve arose in the early 1890s. After several drafts and sketches, including the present one, Krøyer completed the painting “Sankt Hans-blus på Skagen strand” in 1906. It was to be his last major work. It was quite a tour de force for Krøyer to finish the large painting.

A similar study from 1903 with the same motif of Marie Krøyer and Hugo Alfvén standing by a boat on the beach (H. Chr. Christensen, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of P. S. Krøyer (HCC), 1923, no. 727) was sold at Bruun Rasmussen auction 486, 1986 no. 1. In the same year, Krøyer executed another larger sketch of the entire scene on the beach with almost all the people around the bonfire present: “St. Hansblus på Skagens strand" (HCC no. 725, 48×79 cm, sold at Bruun Rasmussen auction 870, 2017 no. 27), but WITHOUT Hugo Alfvén and Marie Krøyer, since they were not present that evening. They only came to Skagen later in the summer that year, where Krøyer could then make his sketches.

Hence it was pure fiction on Krøyer's part to include them in the finished painting. He must have done so because, for better or for worse, they were a part of Krøyer's life and of the Skagen life. Even if in 1906, the separation from Marie and the upcoming divorce was a fact.

The story of Hugo and Marie's relationship is full of love, deceit and pain.

Hugo Alfvén was in Copenhagen in the fall and winter of 1900 in connection with his job as a composer. Here, he visited exhibitions and saw, among other things, paintings by Peder Severin Krøyer depicting Marie at the Hirschsprung Collection. In his book “Minnen” (Stockholm 1972) Alfvén writes (in Swedish): “I had never seen a more beautiful woman, and the grace and elegance of her figure completely enchanted me”(p. 99). He became very interested in getting to know Marie better but heard only bad things about her when he asked around, so he knocked her out of his head. That changed completely when he met her in Taormina in Sicily in 1902, where she had gone with her daughter Vibeke for recreation. It was love at first sight when they met. After her stay in Sicily, Marie went to Paris, where P. S. Krøyer was staying, to ask for a divorce. Krøyer rejected this – he thought the infatuation would pass – but the couple in love continued to meet both in Copenhagen, abroad and even in Skagen, where Krøyer himself invited them. It was on one of these occasions when Alfvén visited Skagen in 1903, that Krøyer painted his two sketches of Marie and Hugo on the beach.

When Marie became pregnant with Hugo's child in 1905, Krøyer had to realize that the battle was lost, and the divorce became a reality. Marie and Hugo lived a stormy marriage in Sweden, where he cheated on her several times. In 1926, he met a woman 20 years younger and wanted a divorce, but Marie didn't! However, it ended with a final breakup in 1936. Marie lived her last years in Stockholm, where she died in 1940.