“After the turn of the century, Anna Ancher develops her own incomparable painterly traits and moves towards an abstract use of light and colour combinations, so that she sometimes just barely lets us sense what the effect looked like in reality”, as art historian Heide Grape-Albers writes very precisely in the exhibition catalogue “Anna Ancher (1859–1935) – Malerin in Skagen” (Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Forum des Landesmuseums, Hannover, The Hirschsprung Collection & The Art Museums of Skagen, 1994–95, p. 104).

In this painting, we see Anna Ancher playing with the inflow of light. The reflections of the sun, so typical of her, are present in this painting. In the upper left section of the painting, the light of the sun through the window is depicted with pastose brushstrokes as strategically placed “panes”. It shows just what a virtuoso Anna Ancher was as painter, and it takes the painting beyond being merely “an interior with a mother and child”. It becomes a small masterpiece.

Provenance: Bruun Rasmussen auction 666, 1999 no. 245, ill. p. 89, with the following provenance: The painting had been acquired by the current owner's family in Skagen in 1935 from the painter Helga Ancher.