Blue marine.

Blue Marine from 1900 belongs to Krøyer's sustained engagement with the sea at Skagen, where the meeting of two seas — the North Sea and the Kattegat — created water conditions of extraordinary variety and visual interest. The blue marine was a specific meteorological condition Krøyer returned to repeatedly: the Skagen sea on calm days with a high blue sky, the water taking on an intense blue-grey color that was quite different from either the turbulent North Sea grey or the Mediterranean blue. Krøyer had been painting Skagen's seascapes since the 1880s and by 1900 was one of the most accomplished marine painters in Scandinavia, his compositions often taking the horizon as a single organizing element that divided blue sky from blue-grey water.

Krøyer uses a restrained palette of blues, greys, and whites to capture the specific quality of the calm Skagen sea, applying paint in flowing horizontal strokes that convey the water's surface without dramatizing it. His handling is confident and technically refined, the marine an expression of complete command of a beloved subject.