The Light at the End of the World

Inspired by miles of sandy beaches and a lengthy blue hour that merges sea and sky, a group of late-19th-century artists transformed a Danish fishing village into a hotbed of artistic expression.

RAY HASSARD

In the late 1990s I visited Dublin, Ireland, and stumbled upon a show of Danish paintings at the National Gallery of Ireland called “Krøyer and the Artists' Colony at Skagen.” At that time in my artistic life I was struggling with my plein air work, and I had assumed the French Impressionists held the solutions to my problems. But the light and colors in the Skagen paintings stunned me; in particular, Peder Severin Krøyer's (1851–1909) scenes of boys in the surf put a smile on my face. Perhaps because I grew up on Long Island and spent many weekends at the beach and on my father's boat, those paintings touched me in a way the French works could not. So who were these people with strange names from a place…

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Pleinair (Digital) - 1 Issue, December/January 2024-2025

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