Kitchen interior. The artist's wife arranging flowers

For the next three Saturdays we will be presenting masterpieces from Skagens Museum in 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. We hope you will love these paintings as much as we do :)

Viggo Johansen first came to Skagen in the summer of 1875, prompted by Michael Ancher. There he met the sisters Henriette and Martha Møller, both cousins of Anna Ancher. Martha and Viggo Johansen were married in 1880, and the couple had six children together. The motif stems from Madam Bendsen’s Farm in the west town of Skagen, where Viggo Johansen and his family rented rooms for several summers in the 1880s, before Krøyer and finally Laurits Tuxen took over the house. Women, children and domestic life were frequent themes in Viggo Johansen’s paintings. Here, Martha is dressed in a dark dress, which matches the green that dominates the room. Contrasting with the green and blue hues, are the copper and brass utensils placed on top of the cupboard, left in the picture. Daylight streams in from the right, highlighting the woman’s pale neck. The painting is inspired by Dutch paintings of the 1600s, in which artists frequently depicted anonymous women occupied with a variety of household tasks. Around the turn of the century, the Johansens did not visit Skagen for a couple of years, due to a disagreement with P.S. Krøyer and his wife Marie. Only in 1903 did the Johansens visit Skagen again.