Exhibited: Herning Kongrescenter, “Skagen i Herning”, 2002. ARKEN, “Skagensmalerne - i nyt lys”, 2008 no. 6.

Literature: Heide Grape-Albers, “Anna Anchers maleri”, in “Anna Ancher (1859–1935) – Malerin in Skagen”, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Forum des Landesmuseums, Hannover, The Hirschsprung Collection & The Art Museums of Skagen, 1994–95, mentioned p. 91, ill. p. 61.

Anna Ancher has painted the motif with the young woman plucking a swan in different versions. There is, for example, a version at Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg (Inv. No. NK 10). Heide Grape-Albers writes about this: “In front of a white wall, which gets its light from the left, sits a young girl. The majestic-looking swan occupies almost the entire diagonal of the painting. Its head is hanging with its beak down on the floor, and its left wing is held in the air so that the woman can better reach the soft down on the chest and belly. The right wing emphasises the curved diagonal in the painting. The girl seems to have just started plucking. The quill is almost intact, yet the large copper pot at her feet is almost full of feathers. [...] the choice of the swan as a motif is unusual, as the picking of geese, ducks and chickens is far more common. But the composition's emphasis on the young girl and the swan - which even in death seems magnificent - on her lap is included and alludes to something mythological, which the educated, bourgeois audience must have noticed. The association with Leda and the swan is obvious.” (pp. 90–91).

Mette Houlberg Rung, “Forenkling”, in “Anna Ancher”, The National Gallery of Denmark, The Art Museums of Skagen & Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, 2020–21, ill. p. 88, mentioned p. 89. Here, Houlberg Rung describes three different versions of the girl with the swan: “The group contains at least one smaller pastel and two larger oil paintings. The works are centered around the same motif, but the colour combination and cropping are different and show how Anna Ancher have worked with a number of different solutions on the same painting. Each work has its own characteristics, among other things the girls are dressed in red, blue and green respectively, and it does not seem to be the same model used in all three works. [...] It also seems to be the colours that she has been preoccupied with in the oil painting of the green girl [the present painting]. Here, the colour palette is reduced, and the complementary colours red and green completely dominate the composition, while Ancher has not, in the same way as in the others, worked with monumentality and simplification, as the room is rendered more in perspective, and there are more details.” (pp. 89–91).

Provenance: Bruun Rasmussen auction 673, 2000 no. 388. Bruun Rasmussen Vejle auction 115, 2008 no. 1.