See the Light: Anna Ancher’s Beautiful and Radical Art | Art and design

WStepping into Anna Ancher’s exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery feels like walking into a stick of butter, or perhaps, more appropriately, a ray of sunlight. The mesmerizing pale yellow walls of the first two galleries immediately immerse you in what Ancher is most famous for: her remarkably radical practice in light painting.

Anna Brundum was born in 1859 and grew up in Skagen, a wild region at the northern tip of Denmark famous for its windswept beaches, ethereal light and wild seas. The area became a destination for artists in the late 19th century, one of whom, Michael Ancher, became Anna’s husband. Her exposure to working artists from her early teenage years set her on the path to becoming an artist herself, something that her parents and future husband unequivocally, extraordinarily, supported. She became part of what eventually became known as the Skagen Painters; As the only member who was actually from Skagen, her work had a deep connection to place unparalleled by her peers.

Rather than serving as a rehabilitation of a ‘forgotten’ artist, this exhibition serves as a long-awaited introduction for British audiences to one of Denmark’s most popular artists to this day. Ancher was never lost to art history as many nineteenth-century women were, but her international reputation (and that of her peers in the Skagen group) was never as great as it deserved. As part of the “Breakthrough Modern” movement in Scandinavian art, Ancher and her friends sought to paint what they called “the truth,” throwing away the confines of academic tradition – which was still out of reach for women in Denmark, anyway.

She spent time in Paris in the 1880s, where she and her husband were exposed to the work of the Impressionists, which greatly influenced her painting style. But her work is unique in its particular devotion to the tones of light that bathed her northern home, from pale butter to rich gold and blood rose. Her soft, confident brushstrokes follow her gestures across each canvas, with textured, layered impasto marks that build a tactile, intermittent pattern of light crossing the room. Most of her works depict her home or the home of other members of the Skagen community. By revisiting the same spaces over and over again, she was able to experiment with form and material, particularly by photographing the repeating pattern of light coming through window panes.

Some of the most poignant works here are Ancher’s paintings of her mother, Anne Müller Brundum, a conflicted figure who was part of a conservative Christian sect and also very supportive of her daughter’s determination to pursue an artistic career. In one, her shawl-covered figure transforms into abstract shades of red and eventually into raw fabric. In another image, she leans on her daughter Agnes’ coffin, which is bathed in shadow while Agnes is completely bathed in white, two poles of color in the image of sadness. Finally, she lies on her deathbed, drawn with profound tenderness by the daughter who had cared and cared for her all her life.

The exhibition shows how much Ansher’s success depends on her huge support system. Her parents, extended family, husband, and network of friends encouraged her, helped her care for her baby Helga, and generally did not bat an eye at her refusal to follow many of her female peers in giving up painting to focus on the roles of wife and mother.

The small, narrow galleries that make up the temporary exhibition space at the Dulwich Picture Gallery fit well into the Ancher Gallery, which is relatively small and intimate. Her paintings hit the sweet spot of being radical yet clear, audience-pleasing yet new, and strange yet familiar.

Leaving the gallery, one wonders how she avoided her work for so long. They are so beautiful, they force viewers to look closely at the paintings in front of them and at their own everyday spaces. Perhaps we can all find as much to see as Anna Ancher did.