Exhibited Charlottenborg 1903 no. 18.

Provenance: Winkel & Magnussen auction 154, 1934 no. 53, ill. p. 11. Bruun Rasmussen auction 469, 1985 no. 2, ill. p. 13.

Litterature: Elisabeth Fabritius, “Anna og Michael Ancher. Breve og fotografier”, 2018, vol. 4:

In a letter (no. 1614), dated 27.2. 1903 Michael writes to his wife Anna about completing the present painting for the exhibition at Charlottenborg (in Danish): “So far, I have got just the weather I kindly asked Our Lord for, namely a sondenstorm, so I can complete the rescue paintings. The large one in particular has undergone a remarkable change. Today I have to work with the hands in it, indeed I have to settle for Niels Møller as a model, but for the hands it can work. I have been standing at the beach these two days with the paintings nailed to the bathhouse. It rained in between and yesterday afternoon it was too much, but then I had also been working for 3 hours”.

A few days later on 5.3. 1903 (letter 1621) Michael again writes to Anna about working with the painting. He has problems with the weather and arthritis in his arm, but still the work continues. “Yesterday was grey and windy and then I got beach and sea on both lifeboat pictures and really seeing how it was, it was a good push”.

The above vividly describes how Ancher stood on the beach in February and March and fought in really tough weather, which is exactly what he wanted, in order to be able to depict the harsh everyday life of the fishermen and manage to get this large painting completed for exhibition at Charlottenborg.