Anna Ancher
This painting has been published thanks to Skagens Museum in Denmark. Thank you and don't forget to follow them on Instagram!
Anna Ancher was the only Skagen painter who was born and raised in the town of Skagen. She was the daughter of the Brøndum's, owner of the only inn in the town, which also served as the main meeting spot for the artist colony in the 1870s and '80s. Anna received her first painting lessons by the artists Karl Madsen, Viggo Johansen and Michael Ancher who came to Skagen in the 1870's. Later on, in 1880, Michael Ancher and Anna Brøndum got married after being engaged for three years, and had a daughter, Helga, in 1883. They lived together in Skagen for the rest of their lives. This painting shows Helga Ancher sitting in the blue room at Brøndum's Hotel, a room in which her grandmother, Ane Hedvig Brøndum, would often spend her days and where Anna Ancher painted several pictures of her mother sitting. As in many of Anna's works, there is no real action; the play of the light in the blue room is the theme of the picture. Often her characters are so preoccupied with their doings that they do not notice of the viewer's presence, and the exchange between the interior and the exterior is very limited, with the light on the wall the only trace of the world outside.