Anna Ancher

This marks the first major exhibition in the UK dedicated to Anna Ancher (1859 – 1935), considered to be one the most important and innovative artists in Danish history.  

Bringing together recently discovered paintings from Anna Ancher’s home, alongside an extensive body of work made throughout the artist’s long career, the exhibition will feature more than 40 of her paintings, including the artist’s most famous masterpieces on special loan from Art Museums of Skagen. A central figure of the Skagen artist colony, based at the northernmost point of Jutland, Ancher is considered to be the leading female artist in Denmark’s history. She is widely celebrated in her homeland yet remains relatively unknown to British audiences.  

Ancher was an influential figure of the Scandinavian ‘Modern Breakthrough’ movement that sought to capture real life, demonstrated in her intimate, observational works, which documented everyday experiences in the fishing town of Skagen. Influenced by her travels to Paris, as well as French Impressionism, the artist produced vivid interiors and evocative landscape scenes in which light becomes the central figure. The exhibition will demonstrate Ancher’s bold approach to colour and radical interpretation of everyday scenes as a truly pioneering modern painter. 

Lisette Vind Ebbesen, Director, Art Museums of Skagen, said: “It’s a great pleasure for us to collaborate with Dulwich Picture Gallery on this Anna Ancher exhibition. We consider her to be one of the most important Danish painters of her time – and so did her contemporaries. Her colors, motifs and style resembled none of them, and they still seem unique and fresh so many years later. We believe she has much to offer the world and are very excited to contribute to the first UK showing of Anna Ancher.”  

The exhibition is curated by Helen Hillyard, Head of Collection, Dulwich Picture Gallery, in partnership with Art Museums of Skagen. Accompanying the exhibition will be a colour- illustrated catalogue with newly commissioned essays by Helen Hillyard and Mette Harbo Lehmann, Curator, Art Museums of Skagen, which will contextualise and further explore Ancher’s life and work.

Supported by The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs & The Danish Ministry of Culture.