Red hollyhocks in the garden of the Ancher family at Markvej in Skagen.

Painted in 1916, this canvas depicting red hollyhocks in the garden at Markvej — the Ancher family's home in Skagen — belongs to the garden series Ancher developed during the 1910s and 1920s when the immediate outdoor surroundings of her home became an important subject in her late work. Hollyhocks, with their tall vertical form, vivid red-pink blooms, and tendency to grow against walls and fences, were a staple of Scandinavian garden painting in this period, appearing in works by Krøyer, Johansen, and other Skagen artists. Ancher's treatment is characteristically direct: the flowers are depicted at close range, their colors unmediated by atmospheric distance, their forms observed with the same precision she brought to fabric and faces. The garden at Markvej had been cultivated by the Ancher family for years and was well known to the Skagen colony; painting it was both a personal and a communal act of documentation. The 1916 date places this among the mature late works in which Ancher's handling of outdoor light and saturated color achieved its greatest fluency. Red hollyhocks against a garden background gave her scope for the kind of chromatic directness she had developed across a long career of observational painting.

Oil on canvas with bold, direct color handling suited to the vivid reds and pinks of hollyhock blooms in outdoor summer light. The vertical thrust of the tall hollyhock stalks creates a strong compositional structure against the horizontal garden backdrop. Brushwork is assured and unhesitating in the treatment of the complex flower forms.