Michael Peter Ancher (1849 – 1927) was a Danish realist artist. He is
remembered above all for his paintings of fishermen and other scenes from the
Danish fishing community in Skagen.
Michael Peter Ancher was born at Rutsker on the island of
Bornholm. The son of a local merchant, he attended school in Rønne but was
unable to complete his secondary education as his father ran into financial
difficulties, forcing him to fend for himself. In 1865, he found work as an
apprentice clerk at Kalø Manor in eastern Jutland. The following year, he met
the painters Theodor Philipsen and Vilhelm Groth who came to the area to paint.
Impressed with his own early work, they encouraged him to take up painting as a
profession.
In 1871, he started at the Royal Danish Academy of Art in
Copenhagen. Although he spent some time at the academy, he left in 1875 without
graduating.
One of his student companions was Karl Madsen who invited
him to travel to Skagen, a small fishing village in the far north of Jutland
where the Baltic and North Sea converge. From the mid-1870s, he and Madsen
became key members of a group of artists who congregated there each summer,
known as the Skagen Painters.
In 1880 Ancher married fellow painter and Skagen native Anna
Brøndum, whose father owned the Brøndums Hotel. In the first years of their
marriage, the couple had a home and studio in the "Garden House",
which is now in Skagens Museum's garden.
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