Three Fishermen Pulling a Boat.

Peder Severin Krøyer's Three Fishermen Pulling a Boat belongs to his long engagement with the fishing community of Skagen at Denmark's northern tip, where he settled in 1882 as part of the Skagen Painters colony. Fishermen — their labor, their bodies, their relationship to sea and boat — were central subjects for the Skagen circle, who found in this traditional community an authentic Danish modernity. The physical exertion of hauling boats from the surf offered Krøyer compositional challenges — the human body straining against resistance — while the northern sea light gave him the optical problems he found most compelling.

Three figures in the arc of physical effort: Krøyer captures the weight and resistance of the heavy wooden boat through the postures and musculature of the men. The silvery northern light of the Skagen coast — characteristic of his mature style — plays across water and sand with subtle chromatic variation.