Anna Ancher – Colourism, Light and a Quiet Fervour
Anna Ancher (née Brøndum) (1859-1935) depicted Skagen, the colours and the light like no other Skagen painter. Her artistic repertoire includes heartfelt portraits of people close to her as well as the quiet lives of women and children with the interior as a frame, while she also mastered the depiction of Skagen’s landscapes, religious motifs and social issues. A consistent feature in Anna Ancher’s works is her uniquely pure way of using colour and light to evoke a mood so clearly that nothing like it had been seen before in Danish art. Her iconic depictions of the inflow of light on the walls of people’s homes create reflections that we know from French Impressionism, and the focus on colour and flickering brushstrokes rather than on narrative points towards a modernist approach to art.
“... yes, it’s good to be here now, the freshness, the air, and also the lovely peace and quiet, which I love so much, you don’t get disturbed by anything...”
Anna Ancher
As the only Skagen painter who was born and raised at Skagen, Anna Ancher must be said to have been weaned on the area’s nature and environment. When she was still young, artists began to come to Skagen, which sparked her own interest in painting. One of these painters was Michael Ancher, whom she married in 1880. Since she, as a woman, could not attend the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in her own time, she instead studied at the Vilhelm Kyhn’s drawing and painting school for women in Copenhagen in 1875 and later went to Paris and continued her studies there. She made her debut at the age of 20 at Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, and as one of the first Danish women she became a successful painter.
With the major works “The Maid in the kitchen” from 1886 (The Hirschsprung Collection) and “Interior with Clematis” from 1913 (The Art Museums of Skagen) Anna Ancher is a pioneer in Danish modern painting. She is continuously praised in both Denmark and abroad with exhibitions such as “A World Apart: Anna Ancher and the Skagen Art Colony” shown in 2012 at The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. and more recently “Anna Ancher”, which in 2021-2022 was shown at the National Gallery of Denmark, the Art Museums of Skagen and Lillehammer Art Museum in Norway, and “Anna Ancher. Sun. Light. Skagen”, which in 2022 was shown at Museum Kunst der Westküste in Germany.