Peonies in the garden.

Painted in 1917, this canvas depicting peonies in the garden represents one dimension of Anna Ancher's late engagement with the outdoor spaces immediately surrounding her home and her father's estate at Brøndum in Skagen. Garden painting occupied a significant place in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century European art, and for the Skagen Painters specifically, the enclosed gardens of the village's larger houses — sheltered from the coastal winds by hedges and fences — offered a domestic counterpart to the dramatic beach and sea subjects of their earlier years. Ancher's garden works from the 1910s and 1920s are among her most coloristically free paintings, the unfiltered outdoor light and the vivid colors of garden flowers inviting a more expansive handling of pigment than her interior subjects typically demanded. Peonies in particular, with their complex, layered blooms and dense, saturated colors, provided a challenging test of coloristic skill. The 1910s were a decade of continued productivity for Ancher despite her advancing age and despite the death of several Skagen contemporaries. These garden paintings document both the specific character of Skagen's cultivated domestic spaces and the evolution of Ancher's late style toward a freer, more chromatic approach.

Oil on canvas with a freer, more coloristically saturated handling than Ancher's interior works. Outdoor light allows for direct observation of the peonies' deep pinks and reds against the greens of garden foliage. Brushwork becomes more broken and gestural as Ancher responds to the informal outdoor setting.