Skagen Painters - Family Relationships

Family Relationships

The Skagen painters quickly began to form a close-knit community as relationships grew between the artists and the young women from the area. In 1880, Michael Ancher married Anna Brøndum from the guest house, Viggo Johansen married Martha Møller, Anna's cousin, and Karl Madsen married Helene Christensen, a schoolteacher. The house the Anchers moved into in 1884 became a focus for the artists' colony, especially as the couple lived there all the year round. When their daughter Helga (the little girl in Hip, hip, hurrah!) died in 1964, she left the house to a foundation which soon turned it into Skagen's Museum, dedicated to the works of the Skagen painters.

The Johansens acquired a large family between 1881 and 1886: Ellen Henriette (daughter of Henriette, Martha's sister, who died during childbirth), Lars, Fritz, Gerda and Bodil. They can be seen dancing around the Christmas tree in Johansen's painting Merry Christmas.

Another key figure in Skagen, P.S. Krøyer, married Marie Triepcke after falling in love with her in Paris in 1888. The daughter of a prosperous German loomery engineer, she was said to be the most beautiful women in Denmark. However, as the years went by, Krøyer's health began to deteriorate and Marie was increasingly unhappy with their marriage. The marriage finally ended in a divorce in 1905 when Marie became pregnant after an affair with Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén whom she then married. Krøyer died in Skagen four years later, apparently as a result of mental illness.

In 1901, after the death of his first wife Ursule, Laurits Tuxen married Frederikke Treschow, a Norwegian, and shortly afterwards purchased Madam Bendsen's house in Skagen where first Viggo and Martha Johansen and later Marie og P. S. Krøyer had stayed in the 1880s. He converted it into a stately summer residence.

Michael Ancher and Laurits Tuxen died in 1927, Anna Ancher and Viggo Johansen in 1935.