The Painter Vilhelm Kyhn Smoking his Pipe

Anna Ancher's portrait of the painter Vilhelm Kyhn smoking his pipe (1903) depicts one of the founding figures of Danish landscape painting, who by this date was an elderly veteran artist nearly fifty years Ancher's senior. Ancher was the only born member of the Skagen painters — she grew up in the fishing village that became Denmark's most celebrated artists' colony — and her portraits of fellow artists carry a warmth of creative solidarity. Kyhn had been important in the 1850s-70s generation of Danish landscape painters, and Ancher's affectionate image preserves his late-life character with sensitivity. The Statens Museum for Kunst holds this as part of its important Ancher collection.

Ancher renders the elderly painter with warm, direct brushwork that conveys character without harshness. The pipe smoke and the sitter's relaxed pose give the image an informal domesticity unusual in formal portraiture. Her characteristic use of warm, golden indoor light plays across the face with the same loving attention she brought to images of Skagen interiors.