Skagen, not just a tourist trap... .

Practicalities as well as romanticism shape journeys; no matter how much you embrace 'living the dream' at some point you will run out of clean underwear and require a laundry. Which is why we are at Camping Grenen Strand - not because of the nearby sand spit's iconic status or Skagen's history of being a haven for painters and writers at the end of the nineteenth century.

Equally, it would be silly to ignore famous places deliberately. So yesterday we duly visited Grenen Strand and today pedalled to Skagen. 

In the latter part of of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, all across Europe artists flocked to fishing villages: Honfleur, Pont Aven, St Tropez and Collioure in France, St Ives in England and Rapello on the Ligurian coast of Italy. The Danish equivalent is Skagen. If you read a history of the development of landscape painting from Realism to Modernism  you will almost certainly find the  assertion that artists were drawn to these small ports because of the rare quality of the light; what gets ignored is they all arrived by train. The development of affordable railway travel has as much to do with where got painted as any aesthetic considerations; yet another example of how the romantic and the mundane are inexorably intermingled.

Skagen's creamy yellow traditional styled houses probably still looked 'quaint' a couple of decades ago. Now the pedestrianised centre abounds with fast food pizza restaurants, outdoor clothing shops and trashy craft places, all surefire signs of the place has been 'peopled bombed' by cruise ship trips.

A little way from the retail fest the museum on the edge of town houses a substantial collection of paintings from the 'Skagen School'. I spent a lot of time in art galleries and museums in my youth, less so in recent years. Gill finds both their faux reverential atmosphere and the earnest 'creative types' that frequent them ridiculous in equal measure. Add to that her bewilderment as to why people still take religious images seriously and irritation that in European art males have purloined the depiction of women for their own purposes, unsurprisingly wandering around a gallery is simply going to irritate her and if you are travelling as couple its best to do stuff you both enjoy.

Sometimes though curiosity gets the better of me. I decided that my knowledge of the development of landscape painting would benefit from a visit to Skagen's museum. Luckily it was sunny and almost warm; Gill was happy to sit outside and watch the creative types go by for half an hour or so while I made a quick visit to the museum.

In some respects I agree with Gill, particularly in relation to the famous big galleries in major cities. Their sheer size makes them exhausting; furthermore, the need to arrange significant collections so they conform to received wisdom regarding style, genre and celebrity makes them dull, like a big compilation box set of 'Hits of the Seventies'. Smaller museums are better because they are more idiosyncratic, Skagen's particularly so; it proved to be very enjoyable.

The celebrated seascapes that this group of artists became famous for are well represented, as you would expect. They are intriguing, as they seem to have adopted and developed the loose handling and 'plein air' approach associated with the Barbizon School and early Impressionists yet eschewed the more radical optical experimentation that this latter group developed during the 1880s. It is the Skagen painter's relationship to their subject matter that is radical rather than an avante garde style.

Peder Severin Krøyer, Mail Coach on Skagen Beach (1893)

What comes over most strongly is a sense of community and friendship between the artists themselves, but also the friendships they developed with the Skagen fisherfolk.

'In the store when there is no fishing'

They painted the locals with honesty and integrity as individuals and equals, not appropriating their depiction to illustrate a philosophical or political point as  Realist masterpieces do, such as Ford Madox Brown's 'Work' or Millet's 'The Gleaners'. Above all the Skagen Museum's collection communicates a sense of a thriving creative community. Big pictures like 'Midsummer Eve Bonfire on Skagen Beach  have the grandeur and ambition of major Realist works - Courbet's 'Funeral at Ornans 'springs to mind - however the Danish work is celebratory rather than morose.

P.S. Krøyer: Midsummer Eve Bonfire on Skagen Beach, (1906)

P.S. Krøyer: Artists at Lunch (1883)

A sense of celebrating the everyday also pervades the group's more intimate works, small moments noted with affection and love. 

Working a decade or so before the generation of the English writers who self consciously regarded themselves as 'moderns' - Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, D. H. Lawrence - the work of the Skagen painters anticipated the growing interest in exploring the psychology of social relationships which you see in early modernist fiction. Generally speaking the avante garde in the visual arts took a different direction and rejected realism altogether. Perhaps the true heirs of the Skagen artists were not painters at all but the twentieth century's photo journalists, in terms of their aesthetic they are closer to 'Magnum' than the mainstream of subsequent twentieth century painting.

Attributed to Oda Krogh, date unknown

Viggo Johansen Children painting spring flowers (1895)

Anna Ancher -Interior with clematis (1913)

The contribution of women artists such as the Anna Anchar,   Marie Krøyer and Viggo Johansen was  key to this, a kind of profound intimacy exudes from their paintings. They were often self taught, unacknowledged pioneers at a time when females were barred from studying at Danish art schools.

My favourite painting in the place is a small square double portrait of Peder and Maria Krøyer. The reason why the two figures look so different in style is that she painted him and he reciprocated. The personalities of the two of them sing out from the piece.

The entire museum is like this, quirky and idiosyncratic. The light-hearted and mundane as well as the serious is commemorated, such as Peder Severin Krøyer's  caricatures of the artists partying or the fact the dining room of the hotel where the artists met socially has been carefully reconstructed.

What shines out from the works themselves and the way the museum has curated them is the humanity and humility of this group of talented artists, a sense that outside of a major cultural centres great work can still happen. Provincial does not necessarily mean parochial.

In the early evening the clouds dissipated. We took a walk over the dunes to a nearby beach. It was easy to see why the Skagen artists celebrated the light here. It has the kind of extraordinary clarity that you get in a mirror, the same silvery tranquility.

G. Turpie Departing Cruise Ship (May 2019)

P.S. Krøyer Summer evening at the South Beach, Skagen - study, (June 1893)

The quietness was disturbed by a low pulsating rumble. I had been woken in the middle of last night and wondered what it was. Now its source became clear - big ships queueing up in the lea of the headland waiting for berths at Skagen or Friedrichshavn docks, engines idling. The cruise ship we had noticed earlier was departed it manoeuvred slowly past the bulk carriers at anchor.

Tomorrow we will be sailing off too, a short four hour hop to Sweden. I don't think we gave Denmark sufficient time in our plan, it has surpassed our expectations.The place has an understated beauty and a welcoming culture. It feels measured without being inhibited, quietly happy. Given the situation a back home there is much to be admired in that.