Artists on Skagen South Beach

Today we share a beautiful piece from one of our favorite museums — Skagens Museum in Denmark. Artists have a long tradition of making sketches of nature, but it was not until the middle and end of the 1800s that they truly began to be outdoors while they painted. When artists started flocking to Skagen during the 1870s, it had become fashionable to complete paintings outside, in front of their motifs, in daylight — the so-called “open-air” or “plain air” painting. In this way, they were able to capture the light and the colours directly on the canvas. More than anything, it was the beaches around Skagen that attracted the artists. At the end of the 1870s, Krøyer visited several French artists' colonies (e.g., in Brittany), but it was when he came to Skagen that he started seriously working close to the sea on open-air paintings. In this painting from September 15, 1882, Krøyer has depicted several open-air painters in action. The two subjects may be the back of the painter and poet Holger Drachmann and the profile of the painter Vilhelm Rosenstand. Krøyer was not only inspired by French open-air painting but also very much by Spanish and Italian open-air painters and their use of sharp and glaring Mediterranean light, both of which are evident in this work.