The Blue Light of Krøyer explodes-at last- at Marmottan!

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Double portrait of Marie and Peder Severin Krøyer, 1890, Skagen, Skagens Kunstmuseer (Each one painted the other)

Visiting the new Krøyer exhibition at Musée Marmottan with an artist, Erik Desmazières, the member of the Académie des Beaux Arts who was recently named its President, was a double privilege. To discover such a luminous Danish artist through his paintings in Skagen, in the North of Denmark, and getting to see his works through the eyes of such an excellent printer as Desmazières is a very exhilarating experience. The show which is hung at Monet’s museum (but not open at the moment), was made possible thanks to loans from the Skagen Museum of Art and private collectors as well as Musée d’Orsay. And a number of Monet paintings owned by Marmottan, will find their way to Skagen in 2022…

The artist Erik Desmazières is the new President of Marmottan

After the extensive exhibition “The Golden Age of Danish painting” at Petit Palais this fall, the light and talent of Northern masters is striking again. These seventy paintings were all painted in Skagen, the fishing village (pop 2 000) located in the far North of Jutland, where the North Sea meets the Baltic, and a five hour ferry trip from Göteborg in Sweden. In 1833 already, Martinus Rørbye painted there before the writer Hans Christian Andersen visited in 1859 and Severin Krøyer in 1882. King Christian X and Queen Alexandrine used to visit in the 1910’s.

“Marie Krøyer painting on the beach”, Stenbjerg, 1889, Skagen, Skagens Kunstmuseer

Peder Severin Krøyer came very early on in Paris in 1877 and studied in Léon Bonnat’s studio. He travels to Saint Malo, Pont Aven,  Concarneau and visits the artists’ colonies in France where he paints fishermen and people on the street. He then travels to the Abruzzi in Italy where he paints the peasants and daily workers like hat makers. When he returns home, he settles in Copenhagen where he grew up raised by his aunt (his father is unknown and his mother was mentally ill). During the year, he paints portraits and city interiors, in Skagen in the summer, he concentrates on beaches, fishermen and country scenes. Some of his works of the sea are almost abstract and the views of fishermen at sunset are stunning.

“Study of the sea”, 1885, Skagen, Skagen Kunstmuseer

He is incredibly successful and wealthy enough with generous buyers like Heinrich Hischsprung and Carl Jacobsen the owner of the Carlsberg brewery. It’s in Paris at Café de la Régence that in 1888, he meets Marie Triepcke, also an artist. Their honeymoon will be spent mostly in Italy where they both paint. His influence on his younger colleagues is very strong and his charm and natural talent for languages (he speaks five fluently) makes him popular among his peers and collectors. One of his most famous painting is “The Stock Exchange in Copenhagen” a 2,54 m by 4,09 m painting with fifty portraits of famous financiers which took him three years to complete.

Fishing boats, 1884, Musée d’Orsay, gift to (and by) Albert Besnard (with an amazing skate in the foreground)

Krøyer was very generous with. his paintings and when he offered them he inscribed the name of the person on the left of the canvas. A few of the works exhibited at Marmottan have such inscriptions and art historian Dominique Lobstein, who is co-curator of the show with Marianne Matthieu, obligingly explained this original habit.

There are pretty paintings of cottages which are reminiscent (as Desmazières outlined) of “Babette’s feast” but what is most amazing is the brilliant light in most paintings. The “blue hour light” as Mette Harbo Lehmann explains in the catalog, which is scientifically explained. Sunset is endless in the North and the sky needs to get dark.  From April 28 to August 14, this blue hour light takes place in Skagen.

“Young girl standing on the beach in Skagen”, Sønderstrand, 1884 This portrait was also used in a large painting of “Summer day in Skagen”

The artist will have one daughter, Vibeke, raised by a depressed mother. He also probably suffered from bipolar troubles inherited from his mother. His fame lessened after his death and it’s mostly through Axel Springer’s interest in 1977, when he bought “A calm evening on the beach of Skagen” for a record amount of money that Krøyer came back to celebrity. It is the first time that he is shown so well in France.

Musée Marmottan until September 26. A beautiful catalog is available for 35€.

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