Estimated Price:

   $   

Realized Price:

   $   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Log in or subscribe to view price data

PROPERTY FROM A DANISH PRIVATE COLLECTION

SKUESPILLERFROKOST (THE ACTORS LUNCH, SKAGEN)

47.5 by 62.5cm., 18¾ by 24½in.

signed with initials m.a. and indistinctly dated 02 l.r.

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Acquired by the father of the present owner in the 1940s

NOTE

Ancher's Skuespillerfrokost is one of a handful of important contemporary 'conversation pieces' that celebrate the close-knit community of Skagen and the rich variety of artistic circles that were drawn to it.

Ancher first visited the village at Jutland's northern tip in 1874. He lodged at Brøndums Hotel, the inn at the heart of village life. There he met his future wife Anna, also a painter, and the daughter of the Innkeeper. Married in 1880, the couple were generous hosts, and the dining table at Brøndums Hotel became the centre of Skagen's artistic community frequently crowded with artists invited by the Anchers to the area.

One such painter invited by Michael Ancher was Peder Severin Krøyer. The two artists had met in Vienna and, on Ancher's recommendation, Krøyer moved to the artists' colony to paint. However Krøyer fuelled some resentment in Ancher, who came to see the successful and worldly painter as a competitor in what had hitherto been his and his wife Anna's territory. But despite this jealousy, Ancher and Krøyer enjoyed a warm friendship, influencing each other's work. In 1888 Krøyer produced his most celebrated and reproduced work, Hipp, Hipp, Hurra (fig. 1). Depicting his artist-friends and their families around a white-clothed table littered with champagne and glasses in a sun-dappled garden, the similarity between this work of 1888 and the present painting from a few years later is not coincidental. Ancher, not wishing to be upstaged by his close contemporary, was inspired to compose a pendant to Krøyer's famous painting.

A journalist recalled a similar scene to that depicted in Ancher's Skuespillerfrokost when he attended a party to celebrate the artist's birthday in 1925, 'I can make out between the glitter of the sun and the golden branches that are like some pastel picture by Krøyer, the long tables clad with dazzling white cloths. The tables have been placed out on the grass quite simply... just as everything in this house breathes freedom, freedom. I know of no other place in the world where festive ceremony blends so naturally with party informality as at the Ancher house in Skagen. There is the same sunny atmosphere in the garden which we know from [...] Ancher's garden and party pictures' (Emil Bønnelykke in a letter to Politiken on 23 June 1925). The influence of Impressionism, brought by Krohg recently returned from Paris, is apparent in the cropped composition, spontaneity of strokes and lively splashes of colour.

The identities of those around the table are recorded in a drawing and oil sketch (fig. 2), both in the Skagens Museum, and include the artist and his wife among the group of celebrated actors and characters (see key on facing page).

Few such quintessential and charming records of Skagen's artistic life remain in private hands and, unknown until now, the appearance of Ancher's Skuespillerfrokost on the market marks an important rediscovery.

Fig. 1, P.S. Kroyer, Hipp, hipp, hurra, oil on canvas, 1888, Göteborgs Konstmuseum ---- digi ref: 282D06101

Fig. 2, Michael Ancher, Lunch i trädgården, circa 1904, oil, Skagens Museum