Portrait of the Artist’sWife Marie

Peder Severin Krøyer was the most celebrated Danish painter of the late 19th century, and this 1889 portrait of his wife Marie is among his most personal and intimate works. Krøyer had married Marie Triepcke in 1889, and this portrait — painted in the very year of their marriage — captures the beginning of a relationship that became central to both their lives and to his art. Marie would go on to be his most important model, appearing in many of his most famous canvases. Now in the Loeb Danish Art Collection, this portrait of his new wife is characterized by the tender directness of someone painting a person deeply known.

Krøyer renders Marie with his characteristic blue-tinted palette and sensitivity to the fall of light on skin. The handling is soft and attentive, without the showmanship of his larger public paintings. The composition is intimate in scale, the face occupying a central position with loose treatment of the surrounding setting.