A major retrospective of the work of the Danish painter Anna Ancher opened on 8 February.

This is the perfect counterpoint to the exhibition of the paintings of Paul Fisher that is the first exhibition at the re-opening of the Museum of Copenhagen. The painters were almost exact contemporaries - Anna Ancher was a year older - but whereas Fischer produced a key record of metropolitan life around 1900 and his paintings of street scenes in Copenhagen are influenced by what he knew of the sophisticated elegance of Paris, Anna Ancher was a leading member of the group of artists who met at Skagen, the fishing settlement at the very northern tip of Jutland. She records her friends and the people she knew there in the settings of their homes and gardens in languid summers and with a strong and almost tangible sense of what was best about provincial life.

Both artists were fascinated by and painted the northern light of Denmark and Anna Ancher certainly knew and was influenced by French art of the period and that influenced the way she used and appreciated and experimented with colour. The exhibition here, includes the artists own crayons or pastels and there are studies shown here that she produced of light or sea scape in pastels or in oils that are stunning.

Her studies of interiors show a mix of furniture periods and styles in comfortable and well-used or clearly occupied rooms and many of the figures or portraits she painted are sharply observed characterisations of people in her circle of family or friends who came to stay and who she knew so well …. there is an outstanding study of her husband slumped back in a chair with one slipper off … either exhausted by the effort of putting on a new pair of stiff leather boots or, possibly, daunted by the thought of the struggle ahead in putting them on.

Paintings of large gatherings of friends dining outside must set a standard for every Danish family with a summer house.

the exhibition on the work of Anna Ancher continues at
Statens Museum for Kunst until 24 May 2020