Carl Locher

Peder Severin Krøyer's 1885 portrait of Carl Locher — a Danish marine painter and graphic artist associated with the Skagen colony — documents the close artistic community that gathered at the Jutland fishing village in the 1880s. Locher, who painted Danish naval and fishing subjects, was among the regular visitors to Skagen. Krøyer's portraits of his fellow Skagen artists constitute a remarkable collective document of the colony — a portrait gallery of the painters, writers, and intellectuals who made Skagen one of the most important artistic communities in northern Europe.

Krøyer renders Locher with the direct, warm portraiture that characterizes his artist-colleague portraits — painting someone he knew well and admired professionally. His palette is warm and confident, the face modeled with particular attention to character and the specific quality of Skagen light on familiar features. The handling is typically Krøyer: technically assured, psychologically direct, with the warmth of a painter documenting someone from his own community.