The Art of Work: Painting Labor in Nineteenth-Century Denmark
One hundred and fifty years ago a group of French artists staged their first independent exhibition in Paris and a radical movement called Impressionism was born. In July of that year, Danish artist Michael Ancher (1849–1927) joined Karl Madsen (1855–1938) in Skagen, Denmark, a fishing village located on the country’s northernmost point. As with the exhibition in Paris, Ancher’s arrival there marked the beginning of an artistic revolution that would upend the academic realism and traditional modes, subjects, and locales…