Many of Peder Severin Kroyer’s paintings depict beach scenes, showing casual beach life and local fishermen. Peder Severin Kroyer, summer night with Anna Ancher and Marie Kroyer at Skagen South Beach, 1893.
He is one of the most famous and popular artists in Skagen, and the most dynamic community of Danish and Nordic artists living, gathering or working in Skagen, especially in the last decades of the 19th century. The Danish artist Peder Severin Kroyer (1851-1909) is famous for his landscape and figurative paintings as a member of the late-century art colony of Skagen, Denmark (Figure 1).
In 1882, Kroyer visited Skagen for the first time and fell in love with the landscape, sea, countryside and especially natural daylight. Kroyer remained in Skagen for the rest of his life, becoming the unofficial leader of the local artists’ colony. When Kroyer first arrived in Skagen in 1882, he was already a renowned artist, so his presence helped solidify the city’s reputation as an artist colony.
In addition to Buttermilk, Kroyer also bought tubes from Danish paint dealer Hermann Averhoff at Kultorvets Farvehandel, where he also bought canvases (Fig. Only two tube colors found in Kroyers paintings were obtained from foreign companies, Lefranc et Cie from France and Felice, respectively Alman from Italy In the archives of the Royal Danish Library, a survey of the price lists of 19th century Danish paint shops was carried out, and the trade names on the tube colors were in most cases shown on the label in Danish and French.
In particular, the large portrait of Drachman, completed just 2 years before Croyers’ death in 1909, turned out to be closely related to the pipe colors found in the artist’s painting. Pigments of cadmium sulfide, viridian, cobalt blue and white zinc were examples of pigments found in both Drachman Croyers’ portrait and some of the colors of his tubes. The instability of chromate pigments was well known to nineteenth century artists [22,23,24], which allows Croyer to deliberately avoid using them to a greater extent in his paintings. While Croyer’s paintings of the blue period, especially those that used the double light motif, were important to Skagen’s romantic appeal in Denmark, they were more important in distinguishing Croyer’s work as exclusively Danish in the eyes of his Parisian audience.
Scenes such as a walk along the beach, dinner together, and a great atmosphere of moonlit evenings were the motives Croyers chose. One of Kroyer’s most iconic masterpieces, A Summer Evening at the Skagen-Sonderstrand of 1893, is one of the most famous works of this period. Probably the most famous painting by Kroyer “Summer Evening in Skagen”, depicting his wife with a dog on the seashore, was painted in 1892. In 1899, Kroyer wrote Summer Evening on the Beach in Skagen, The Artist and Her Wife (Hirschsprung Collection, drawing.
In 1890, the couple created a double portrait in which they painted each other … Kroyer painted Marie and Maria painted him. Peder Severin Kroyer painted several portraits of his wife, Marie Kroyer né Triepcke, a Danish artist who was considered one of the most beautiful women in Copenhagen. Marie Kra, who was also an artist, joined the Skagen community, and after their marriage she was often depicted in the paintings of the Crete.
They divorced in 1905, and just four years later, Peder died at the age of 58. Alfven had an affair with her and the child and eventually married.
Kroyer was fascinated by city life, and when he married Marie Kroyer, they had been living in Skagen since 1891. After he married the artist (and interior designer) Marie Tripke in 1889, the couple decided to move to this village permanently. In 1874, Heinrich Hirschsprung purchased his first painting from Kroyer and established a long-term sponsorship.
Among the exhibitions and retrospectives dedicated to his work was the “Colony of Croyer and Artists” in Skagen in 1998 at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.
Mark Murray Fine Paintings is a New York-based gallery specializing in the buying and selling of art from the 19th and early 20th centuries. With the support of the Danish Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Danish Embassy in Paris; the Danish Department of Culture and Palace; and the New Carlsberg Foundation, the exhibition is the largest P.S. in France. The Hirschsprung Collection and Skagen Museum provide an extensive exhibition based on the research of P. S. Kroyers’ work. This artist is definitely the core of these two museums, where two of his largest works are collected.
Effortlessly combining realism and impressionism, Kroyer developed some of the most timeless works of the late 19th century. Kroyer wrote and talked a lot, Danish artist Lauritz Tuxen wrote at the memorial shortly after Kroyer’s death. Kroyer received his classical education in Copenhagen at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts, where he received a scholarship and a gold medal as the best student. He was highly talented as a painter and was respected as a portrait painter, which was a very prestigious genre at the time.
He has been traveling all his life, constantly drawing inspiration from foreign artists and cultures. Hirschsprung provided financial support during his first trip, while Kroyer continued to exhibit in Denmark during this period.
From June to October, he spent in Skagen, then a remote fishing village on the northern tip of Denmark, creating themes from local life and images of the local art community. He returned every summer until he became a permanent home in 1889, marrying Marie Tripke.
After his mother was deemed unfit to take care of him, he was raised by Gesdals’ sister Bertha Cecily (born 1817) and his brother-in-law, Danish zoologist Henrik Nikolai Kroyer. Croyer soon moved to Copenhagen to live with her adoptive parents.
When Peder Severin Kroyer met young Marie, he was already a permanent member of the Skagen group of artists who lived and worked in Skagen, Denmark. Although his wife was never widely known as an artist during her lifetime, long after her death – even long after her daughter’s death – she was recognized as one of the finest Danish painters of her time. Croyer, a Norwegian-Danish artist, was born in Stavanger, Norway to Ellen Cecily Gyesdal.
Currently, Kroyer is the most famous representative of this group, but they were all interested in similar topics; the beauty of the cold northern sea, fishermen and crops, and like the Impressionists, they are meticulously dedicated to depicting exposure to sunlight and people having a good time, especially their families and friends. Initially, Kroyer began to closely study the work of Velazquez, but he became a main member of the Skagen group, whose members were called artists of light. Other artists in Skagen included the writers Holger Drachman, Georg Brandes and Henrik Pontoppidan, as well as the artists Michael Ancher and Anna Ancher. Kroyer stayed in Skagen, occasionally welcoming students, one of whom was Wilhelm Hammershoy.
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