Anna Ancher, Sunlight in the Blue Room, 1891. Skagens Museum, Skagen.
The Danish Anna Ancher was part of the Skagen Painters, an artist colony in the northernmost tip of Denmark where two seas meet (Skaggerak and Kattegat). Anna Ancher created some of the most stunning interior scenes and portraits of the nineteenth century. As the only native-born member of the Skagen Painters colony, she offers a unique perspective on this pivotal movement in Scandinavian art.
Born Anna Brøndum in Skagen, Anna was the daughter of innkeeper Erik Brøndum, whose inn and attached annex became the social and creative hub for the artists' colony. This gave her unprecedented access to artistic training and discourse from childhood, though as a woman, she faced significant barriers to formal education.
The Skagen Painters (Skagensmalerne) were a community of Scandinavian artists who gathered in Skagen, Denmark—the northernmost point of Jutland where the North Sea and Baltic Sea converge—primarily between 1875 and the early 1900s. This artists' colony emerged during a broader European trend toward plein-air (open air) painting and artistic communities seeking to escape academic constraints.
Michael Ancher, Anna Ancher, 1902. Skagens Museum, Skagen.
Key figures included P.S. Krøyer, Michael Ancher (Anna's husband), Holger Drachmann, and Laurits Tuxen. They were drawn to Skagen's distinctive quality of light, the dramatic coastal landscape, and the opportunity to paint the lives of the local fishing community. The movement represented a shift from the grand historical and mythological subjects favored by academic art toward naturalism and everyday scenes.
Peder Severin Krøyer, Summer Night on the Southern Beach of Skagen (Anna Ancher and Marie Krøyer), 1893. Skagens Museum, Skagen.
The Skagen painters were influenced by contemporary French developments—particularly the Barbizon School and early Impressionism—but developed a distinctly Nordic aesthetic characterized by luminous coastal light, muted color palettes, and an emphasis on communal life and labor.
Anna Ancher, Interior with Clematis, 1913. Skagens Museum, Skagen.
While her male counterparts often focused on outdoor scenes and the drama of maritime life, Ancher specialized in interior spaces suffused with natural light. Works like Sunlight in the Blue Room and Interior with Clematis demonstrate her sophisticated understanding of how light transforms domestic spaces and creates psychological atmosphere.
Ancher's subject matter centered on the domestic sphere and the lives of Skagen's women—fishermen's wives, local girls, mothers and children. This wasn't merely a limitation imposed by gendered expectations but a deliberate artistic choice that elevated and dignified women's experiences. Her painting The Maid in the Kitchen exemplifies this approach.
Anna Ancher, The Maid in the Kitchen, 1883/1886. The Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen
Importantly, Ancher achieved recognition during her lifetime—a rarity for women artists of her era. She exhibited at the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition from 1880 onward, received medals at international exhibitions in Chicago (1893) and Paris (1900), and was awarded the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat travel grant in 1924.
Anna Ancher, Evening Sun in the Artist’s Studio at Markvej, c. 1913. Skagens Museum, Skagen.
Fun fact: She never left Denmark to study art abroad like most artists did. She learned from other Skagen painters and developed her own style right there in that little fishing village.
If you love artists like Vilhelm Hammershøi or the intimacy of Johannes Vermeer's interiors, you need to look up Anna Ancher immediately.
