Marie Krøyer – Naturalist and Colourist
Strolling closely with Anna Ancher by the water’s edge and under the moonlight at Skagen. This is how Marie Krøyer (née Triepcke) (1867-1940) is known to many from Peder Severin Krøyer’s painting “Summer Evening at Skagen Sønderstrand”. As an artist, she stood in the shadow of her husband, who was one of the country’s most famous artists, but Marie Krøyer was also a talented artist in her own right. She was a true colourist and naturalist with a keen sense of observation. In addition to painting, she had a particularly good eye for design and interior decoration with inspiration from the English Arts & Crafts movement.
“Oh, I wish I had been born a man! They have it a thousand times better than us women. They are free to learn something, while we must beg for it.”
Marie Krøyer
Born in a time when women were not admitted to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Marie Krøyer had to take action to obtain an artistic education. In 1885, she helped establish Den lille Malerskole (the Little School for Painters) and the following year Atelierskolen (the Atelier School), which were precursors to the special model school for women, Kunstskolen (The Art School) under the Academy of Fine Arts. Marie Krøyer also went to Paris to study, which helped move her style in the direction of French Naturalism. After being taught by Krøyer in Copenhagen, she met him again in Paris, where they fell in love. They were married in 1890 and settled in Skagen. Here they became an important part of the artists’ colony as one of the most famous couples of the time, but their marriage was not a happy one. They divorced in 1905, and Marie Krøyer would later marry the Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén.
Among Marie Krøyer’s most important works are “At the Loom” from the 1890s and “Sunlit Pergola from Ravello” from 1890 (both at the Art Museums of Skagen). In recent years, Marie Krøyer has gained increasing recognition as being part of the Skagen painters after the exhibition “Marie Krøyer Alfvén, Paintings, Drawings, Design” from 2004-2005 at, among others, Øregaard Museum and Lillehammer Art Museum, Bille August’s film “Marie Krøyer” from 2012 and the exhibition “Marie Krøyer”, which will be shown in 2023-2024 at The Art Museums of Skagen and the Hirschsprung Collection.