17/11/25
Anna Ancher: Painting Light
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
4 November 2025 – 8 March 2026
Thickly daubed orange rectangles glow warmly from a dove-blue canvas; next to this, silvery panes stretch out across a blue wall and a striped carpet on the floor, the silhouette of a plant reaching tall, elongated in its reflection on the wall.
As the title of this exhibition intimates, this is a show about light, as evidenced by these and a great many other of the works on display; but, as well as that, it is a show about women at work, both explicitly depicted on the canvases, busy at their traditional chores, and implicitly expressed in the persona of the artist at her easel who produced this delightful body of paintings. That artist is Anna Ancher (née Brøndum, 1859-1935).
Although not a known name in the UK, Ancher does not deserve to be tagged as one of the many “recent rediscoveries” of female artists, since, in her home country of Denmark, she achieved success during her lifetime and remains well-known. Born in the village of Skagen, on the Skaw peninsula, Ancher grew up, the daughter of the only hoteliers in the vicinity, getting to know the many visiting artists as they came to paint the dramatic scenery where the North Sea meets the Baltic, and the sand dunes are littered with the remains of many shipwrecks. Spotting precocious talent in the young girl, the artists encouraged her and gave her lessons; at the age of 15, she was sent to Copenhagen to attend Vilhelm Kyhn’s school for female painters (as the Danish Academy still did not accept women). She went on to marry the painter Michael Ancher, and the couple became the beating heart of the artist colony that formed in Skagen.
Read my full review here