Little Brother

Painted in 1905 and held by the Hirschsprung Collection in Copenhagen, 'Little Brother' belongs to the body of work Anna Ancher devoted to the children of Skagen, a subject she approached with the same attentiveness she gave to the village's fishermen and women. The Hirschsprung Collection, formed by the tobacco manufacturer Heinrich Hirschsprung, was one of the most important private collections of Danish Golden Age and Skagen Painters' work assembled in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its acquisition of this work reflects the high regard in which Ancher was held by serious Danish collectors. In such works, Ancher typically placed children within lit interior spaces or outdoor settings that allowed her to study the interaction of light with young, smooth skin and the vivid colors of children's clothing. The small, carefully composed scale of 'Little Brother' suggests an intimate observation rather than a formal commission — Ancher seems to have been drawn to the particular quality of an infant or young child's concentrated, unselfconscious existence, rendering it without sentimental idealization. By 1905, the Skagen colony's founding generation were entering middle and old age, and the children who appear in works from this decade represent a new generation of the Skagen community.

Oil on canvas at an intimate scale suited to a close study of a child. Ancher's handling of light on the child's skin and clothing demonstrates her characteristic mastery of warm, diffuse interior illumination. The palette is warm and carefully balanced, avoiding the prettified sweetness of conventional child portraiture.