Michael Peter Ancher was a Danish impressionist artist. He is most associated with his paintings of fishermen and other scenes from the Danish port of Skagen

Skagen

Skagen is a projection of land and a town, with a population of 8,515 , in Region Nordjylland on the northernmost tip of Vendsyssel-Thy, a part of the Jutland peninsula in northern Denmark...

. His paintings are classics and he is probably one of Denmark's most popular artists.

Background

Michael Peter Ancher was born at Rutsker on the island of Bornholm

Bornholm

Bornholm is a Danish island in the Baltic Sea located to the east of the rest of Denmark, the south of Sweden, and the north of Poland. The main industries on the island include fishing, arts and crafts like glass making and pottery using locally worked clay, and dairy farming. Tourism is...

. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Art

Royal Danish Academy of Art

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts has provided a practice-oriented complement to the scholarly investigation of the arts carried out at Danish universities for more than 250 years, playing a crucial part in the development of the distinctive tradition of the art of Denmark.- History :The Royal...

  (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

 (1871-5), where his teachers Wilhelm Marstrand

Wilhelm Marstrand

Nicolai Wilhelm Nikolaj Marstrand , painter and illustrator, was born in Copenhagen, Denmark to Nicolai Jacob Marstrand, instrument maker and inventor, and Petra Othilia Smith...

 and Frederik Vermehren

Frederik Vermehren

Johan Frederik Nikolai Vermehren, also known as Frederik Vermehren, , Danish realistic genre and portrait painter, was born in Ringsted to glazier Peter Frederik Nikolai Vermehren and his wife Sofie Amalie. His artistic career took place during the period of Danish art between the Golden Age of...

 encouraged his interest in genre painting. Here he also met Karl Madsen

Karl Madsen

Carl Johan Wilhelm Madsen, commonly known as Karl Madsen, was a Danish painter and art historian who after close connections with the Skagen Painters joined the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts where he was museum director from 1911–1925....

, who would later become Skagen Museum's first director and who invited him to travel to Skagen

Skagen

Skagen is a projection of land and a town, with a population of 8,515 , in Region Nordjylland on the northernmost tip of Vendsyssel-Thy, a part of the Jutland peninsula in northern Denmark...

. A group of artists had congregated to form the Skagen Painters

Skagen Painters

The Skagen Painters were a group of Scandinavian artists who gathered in the area of Skagen, the northernmost part of Denmark, from the late 1870s until the turn of the century...

 in Skagen, a small fishing village in the north of Denmark, situated where the Baltic

Baltic Sea

The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...

 and North Sea

North Sea

In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...

 converge.

After Ancher first visited Skagen in 1874, he settled there joining the growing society of artists. The colony of painters regularly met in the Brøndums Hotel in Skagen in order to exchange ideas. In 1880 Ancher married fellow painter and Skagen native Anna Brøndum

Anna Ancher

Anna Ancher was a Danish artist associated with the Skagen Painters, an artists' colony in the very north of Jutland.-Background:...

, whose father owned the Brøndums Hotel. In the first years of their marriage, the couple had a home and studio in the "Garden House", which is now in Skagen Museum garden. After the birth of his daughter Helga in 1883 the family moved to Markve in Skagen.

Career

He got his artistic breakthrough in 1879 with the painting Vil han klare pynten (Will he Round the Point?). Michael Ancher's works are true-to-life depictions of reality and at the same time monumental figure compositions. Michael Ancher's life's work is founded on the heroic series The Lifeboat is Carried Through The Dunes (1883), The Crew Are Saved (1894) and The Drowned Man (1896).

Michael Ancher was influenced by his traditional training at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in the 1870s which imposed strict rules for composition, and he found it difficult to adjust to Scandinavian painting's modern breakthrough, the "Skagen School". His marriage to Anna Ancher

Anna Ancher

Anna Ancher was a Danish artist associated with the Skagen Painters, an artists' colony in the very north of Jutland.-Background:...

 did, however, introduce him to the naturalistic concept of undecorated reproduction of reality and its colours. By combining the pictorial composition of his youth with the teachings of naturalism, Michael Ancher created what has been called modern monumental figurative art such as A Baptism.

The works of Anna and Michael Ancher can be seen at the Skagen Museum

Skagen Museum

Skagen Museum is an art museum in Skagen, Denmark, which exhibits an extensive collection of works by members of the colony of Skagen Painters who lived and worked in the area in the late 19th and early 20th century. Important artists include Maria and P. S. Krøyer, Anna and Michael Ancher, Laurits...

, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, the Frederiksborg Museum

Hillerød

Hillerød Kommune is a municipality in Region Hovedstaden . The municipality covers an area of 191 km² , and has a total population of 46,568...

, The Hirschsprung Collection

The Hirschsprung Collection

The Hirschsprung Collection is an art museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is located in a parkland setting in Østre Anlæg, near the Danish National Gallery, and houses a large collection of Danish art from the 19th and early 20th century...

 and Ribe Art Museum

Ribe Kunstmuseum

Ribe Kunstmuseum is the name of the art museum in Ribe, the oldest town of Denmark.Ribe Kunstmuseum was inaugurated in 1891.Since then it has been housed in one of the most important private buildings in Ribe: The factory owner Balthazar Giørtz' large private establishment, built 1860-64 after...

. Michael Ancher received the Eckersberg Medal

Eckersberg Medal

The Eckersberg Medal is an annual award of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts...

 in 1889 and in 1894 the Order of the Dannebrog

Order of the Dannebrog

The Order of the Dannebrog is an Order of Denmark, instituted in 1671 by Christian V. It resulted from a move in 1660 to break the absolutism of the nobility. The Order was only to comprise 50 noble Knights in one class plus the Master of the Order, i.e. the Danish monarch, and his sons...

. Originally their paintings hung in the dining room of the Brøndums Hotel. The painter P.S. Krøyer conceived the idea of placing paintings by different artists in the wall panels. In 1946 the dining hall was donated to the Skagen Museum.

Michael and Anna Ancher's house

The Skagen residence of Anne and Michael Ancher was purchased in 1884. In 1913, a large studio annex was added to the property and this also forms part of what is on display today. Upon her death in 1964, the Ancher's daughter, Helga, left the house and all of its contents to a foundation. The former residence was restored and opened as a museum and visitor attraction.

In 1967 Michael and Anna Ancher's house was turned into a museum by the Helga Ancher Foundation. Michael and Anna Ancher's house (Anchers Hus) in Skagen

Skagen

Skagen is a projection of land and a town, with a population of 8,515 , in Region Nordjylland on the northernmost tip of Vendsyssel-Thy, a part of the Jutland peninsula in northern Denmark...

 has been converted to a museum and is open to the public for tours. Original furniture and paintings created by the Anchers and other Skagen artists are shown in the restored home and studio. Art exhibitions are arranged in Saxilds Gaard, another building on the property. This house is filled with displays of paintings by Michael and Anna Ancher as well as those from many other Skagen painters who made up their circle of friends.

Danish thousand-kroner bill

Anna and Michael Ancher are currently featured on the front side of the DKK1000 bill

Banknotes of Denmark, 1997 series

Danmarks Nationalbank is issuing banknotes of the Danish Krone and is in the transition of replacing the 1997 banknote series. As of September 2010 the 200kr, 500kr and 1000kr from the 1997 series are the currently circulating notes....

. The current version of this bill came into circulation on 25 November 2004. The front of the banknote has a double portrait of Anna and Michael Ancher, derived from two 1884 paintings by Peder Severin Krøyer

Peder Severin Krøyer

Peder Severin Krøyer , known as P.S. Krøyer, was a Norwegian-Danish painter. He is one of the best known and beloved, and undeniably the most colorful of the Skagen Painters, a community of Danish and Nordic artists who lived, gathered or worked in Skagen, Denmark, especially during the final...

which originally hung on the walls in the dining room at Brøndums Hotel.

External links

• Brøndums Hotel Danish
• Skagen Paintings