Portrait of the fisherman Jens Diget wearing a sou'wester.

Portrait of the Fisherman Jens Diget Wearing a Sou'wester, painted in 1903, is one of the most specific of Ancher's late fishermen portraits — the sitter named, his distinctive weatherproof hat identified, the portrait situating itself within the material culture of the North Sea fisherman's working life. The sou'wester was functional equipment for men who worked in violent North Sea weather, and its inclusion in the portrait grounds the image in the realities of Skagen fishing rather than abstracting the fisherman into a romantic type. The specificity of name and hat is characteristic of Ancher's documentary seriousness.

The sou'wester's distinctive shape creates an unusual compositional element, its brim defining a horizontal form above the face that Ancher integrates into his portrait structure. The oilskin material has a distinct surface quality — smooth, slightly reflective — that he renders differently from the woolen garments of his other fishermen subjects.