MARIE KRØYER (1867/1940), DANISH PAINTER – Not only beautiful wife of a painter

UNEXPRESSED POTENTIAL OF UNLUCKY PAINTER

MARIE KRØYER 1/3 – As a girl, she had aspired to become a painter. She was born in Frederiksberg (typically considered as part of Copenhagen), where she had enjoyed a comfortable life, but it was difficult for women to enter into a career as artists. Shows, movies and biographies continue to talk about her life, even though she died in 1940. A 2012 movie tells about tormented life of a beautiful woman named Marie, married to the most beloved Danish painter of that time. Marie belonged to the cultural elite of Copenhagen and with the support of her parents, she had attended art academies in Denmark and Paris. In 1888 she went studying painting together with Anna Ancher (a Danish, who became her friend for a lifetime). Even today, many Danish continue to remember her as the beautiful wife of Peder Severin Krøyer, who belonged to the artist colony: Skagen painters. He fell in love with her in Paris, they married and in 1891 settled in Skagen.

MARIE KRØYER 2/3 – After the Paris encounter with Krøyer, she was reluctant to paint because she considered her husband as a much more competent artist. Inspired by the beauty of Marie, the painter liked to portray her portraits. Krojer’s most famous work is “Summer Evening on Skagen Beach, with Anna Ancher and Marie Krøyer”. Since 1900, their conjugal life had become difficult for a husband’s mental illness, which alternates moments of lucidity at times of madness, in which he becomes paranoid and dangerous. She divorced and fell in love with a Swedish composer and moved to Sweden. Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB9nq_8h8Lg They married in 1912, but marital problems once again resulted in divorce. What has discouraged this woman to continue to paint is unknown, perhaps a lack of self-confidence, or health problems caused by post-natal depression after birth of their daughter.

MARIE KRØYER 3/3 – She had accepted her new role as housewife and mother, saying “Sometimes I think the whole effort is vain, we have too much to overcome, what I really mean, if I paint it, I can never do something really big. In our case, though sometimes it can be terribly difficult.” Only a few of her paintings survived, but of particular interest are two of her works: her impressionist self-portrait and her last known painting (The market in a French city). Paintings, which her daughter left in Skagens Museum http://skagenskunstmuseer.dk/en/ show, that her mother was a painter with great unexpressed potential. Basically, she had tried to become a painter, but the circumstances had been adverse. She died in Stockholm, but was buried in the cemetery of Leksand (central Sweden), along with her two daughters. Https://www.leksandresort.se/sommarland/

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