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Peder Severin Krøyer

Born: Stavanger, Norway, 23 July 1851
Died: Skagen, 21 November 1909
Nationality: Norwegian-Danish
Background: 

child of single mother, declared incompetent when he was 9; raised by aunt and uncle in Copenhagen

Studies: 

at the Copenhagen Akademy (Kongelige Akademi for de Skønne Kunster) (1864-70); with Léon Bonnat in Paris (1877-79)

Career: 

1871 – first public exhibition, at Charlottenborg Palace (Portrait of Frans Schwartz); exhibits there regularly throughout his life

1873 - wins gold medal from Copenhagen Academy

1870s – joins artist colony at Hornbaek

1879 – paints in Brittany

1881 – Italian Village Hat Makers wins medal at Paris Salon

1882 – returns to Denmark; begins teaching in Copenhagen; joins Michael and Anna Ancher and Viggo Johansen in Skagen; begins teaching at Artists' Study School (Kunstnernes Studieskoler, Copenhagen)

1888 – organizes French Art Exhibition in Copenhagen; receives Légion d’honneur

Travels

Paris 1877; Spain (1878); Brittany (1879); Italy (1879-81); regular travel between Copenhagen and Skagen from 1882

Patrons

Heinrich Hirschsprung

Important Artworks: 

Italian Village Hat Makers, 1880   ( Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen)

Hipp, Hipp, Hurra! A rtists’ Luncheon in Skagen , 1883 (Göteborgs Konstmuseum ). In the right foreground is Anna Ancher with her daughter Helga. Christian Krohg is the second man on the left (long beard) and behind him stands Krøyer.

Self-Portrait with Hat, 1897 (Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen)

Summer Evening on the Beach at Skagen - The Artist and his Wife , 1899 (Hirschprung Museum, Copenhagen) (Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen)

 

 

Thor Mednick explains that Krøyer chose subjects, compositions, and methods designed to succeed with critics in both Copenhagen and Paris: 

“Krøyer was trying to create a visual style calibrated to be effective not only in Copenhagen but in Paris, as well: a negotiated modernism that would be at once comfortingly familiar and intriguingly exotic to both audiences. ‘Krøyer has been written and spoken of a great deal’, wrote Danish painter Lauritz Tuxen in a memorial shortly after Krøyer's death. ‘Not for nothing did his reputation precede him all over the world; not for nothing did friends and pupils, young and old, gather around him and acknowledge him as their standard-bearer’. Paintings that resembled those of other exhibitors might have been sufficient to earn Krøyer a place or two on the wall at the Champs-de-Mars, but they would hardly have caused him to be singled out, not only in Copenhagen but in Paris, as well. In a review of the 1900 International Exposition, French critic Camille Mauclair declared that ‘Denmark presents only one beautiful painter, but he is of considerable value: that is, Mr. Krøyer’. In the same year, critic Léonce Bénédite took it for granted that Krøyer was ‘the artist who is, without doubt, the most important figure in [the Danish] school’."

Thor J. Mednick, “Danish Internationalism: Peder Severin Krøyer in Copenhagen and Paris,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 10/1 (Spring 2011).

Web Resources:

Danish Internationalism: Peder Severin Krøyer in Copenhagen and Paris