Dulwich Picture Gallery - photos

 Flag Trip reports - 27th January 2026  1) Cherry Rosewall 2) Jane Farrington

 "Anna Ancher (1859–1935), one of Denmark’s most celebrated and pioneering artists, in her first-ever UK exhibition.

Known for her luminous paintings, bold use of colour, and ability to capture light like no other, Ancher offers a fresh and powerful perspective on the art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Though a household name in Denmark, Ancher is little known in the UK. This landmark exhibition brings her work to British audiences for the first time, showcasing over 40 paintings from across her career — including masterpieces on loan from The Hirschsprung Collection and Skagens Museum.

Though a household name in Denmark, Ancher is little known in the UK. This landmark exhibition brings her work to British audiences for the first time, showcasing over 40 paintings from across her career — including masterpieces on loan from The Hirschsprung Collection and Skagens Museum.

A central figure among the Skagen Painters, Ancher grew up in the fishing village she so often depicted. Her intimate connection to the town and its people shines through in her work — from the contemplative Old Man Whittling Sticks (1880), her formal debut as an artist, to the radiant Sunlight in the Blue Room (1891), where light becomes almost tangible.

Her art bridges tradition and modernity, drawing on French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism while remaining deeply rooted in the culture and rhythms of coastal Denmark.

  https://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/whats-on/anna-ancher-painting-light/

Adults from £18 
free for members 

Image:  Anna Ancher, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
 

Further text and images by Cherry Rosewall

It was a very interesting trip which everyone seemed to enjoy despite a long journey in dreadful wet weather. 

 

Sir John Soane designed the gallery in 1811 and it opened in 1817. Apparently it was the world's first public picture gallery! There is even a mausoleum inside the building with the tombs of the founders.

 

The Anna Ancher exhibition was wonderful and there are many famous artists in the permanent collection. Pictures are some Anna Ancher and a Rembrandt. 

 

 By Jane Farrington.

ANNA ANCHER – Painting Light

Dulwich Picture Gallery 4 Nov 25 – 8 Mar 26

 

Perhaps it is not surprising to learn that this is the first exhibition on the Danish artist, Anna Ancher to be held in the UK.  Scandinavian art is poorly represented in British public collections and women artists of past centuries have been routinely side-lined and neglected.  However, when an intrepid group of FLAG members arrived at Dulwich Picture Gallery on a dark, wet January day, the exhibition was buzzing with visitors and it is not hard to see why.

 

Ancher lived and worked for most of her life amongst the impoverished fishing community of Skagen on Denmark’s northernmost tip.  She became a central figure in a colony of artists known as the Skagen Painters and it is, I think, significant the she was the only member of the group to be born and raised in Skagen.  Looking at her work, it seems that the bleak, flat landscape with it pale northern light and the lined weather-beaten faces of the inhabitants are part of her own life-blood.  That close connection comes across in the variety of subject-matter she tackled – landscapes, the seashore, portraits and scenes of everyday life – and the warmth and empathy that she portrays.  This particularly comes out in her depiction of light which is subtly present even in the darkest cottage interiors.  Soft beams of sunlight glow through gauze curtains, creep across tiled floors and along white-washed walls and flicker over the faces of young and old.  Solitary female figures in domestic spaces recall Vermeer and her portraits, particularly of elderly sitters, have a Rembrandt-like humanity in their tenderness.  I particularly admired a small-scale head and shoulders portrait of an elderly fisherman.  His rough, weather-beaten face and intense, anxious gaze conveyed vividly the harsh, isolated way-of-life at Skagen.

 

 

 

Nevertheless, Ancher was not isolated in her own life, travelling with her husband in Europe and, most significantly, spending some time in Paris in the 1880s.  Her observation of reflective rainbow colours on, for example, a white tablecloth or a painted garden bench show the impact of French Impressionism.  Like the Impressionist painters, the most ordinary, everyday subjects she chose to depict, have a glowing luminosity which convey so vividly a particular time and place – her own world.