Postmaster Schrøder, Anna Ancher and Henny Brodersen: A preliminary study for Sankt Hansblus på Skagen Strand (Midsummer Night on Skagen Beach)

Henny Brodersen was one of the most important figures in Peder Severin Krøyer’s life at this time. As Lise Svanholm succinctly surmises, after Krøyer’s wife Marie “had fallen for Hugo Alfvén, Krøyer compensated by starting a friendship with Henny Brodersen…In 1905, he drew a design for a ring for Henny Brodersen, with an H and an S between hearts and the date 1903. One day, he suggested to her that they should marry”. (L. Svanholm, The Skagen Painters, translated by Walton Glyn Jones, Gylling, 2004, p.206). Henny chose to stay with her husband Hansi and their children, but her relationship with Krøyer at this time cannot be overvalued.
This is a preliminary sketch for one of Krøyer’s most celebrated and iconic works, Sankt Hansblus på Skagen Strand/ Midsummer Night on Skagen Beach (1906), which is now in the Skagens KunstMuseer. As a celebrated portraitist, the final group portrait featuring members of the artist’s colony with local dignitaries was a tour-de-force masterpiece exhibiting his prowess at portraiture whilst celebrating his life in Skagen, and Denmark, on one of the most important nights in the Danish calendar.
Krøyer completed Midsummer Night on Skagen Beach in 1906 after several years preparatory work. It was shown in Venice in 1909 where, as Voss observes, Krøyer “saw it on the last of his many journeys abroad. From Venice he wrote home to Henny Brodersen about ‘sun, spring, about longing, longing for Skagen, for close friends, for the fair South Beach and the fine, mild evenings”. (K. Voss The Painters of Skagen, translated by Peter Shield, Stockholm, 1994, p.197)
To the left of Henny stands their close friend, Anna Ancher, wearing her distinctive green shawl in a similar stance to her pose in the final painting. The male figure to her left, in the spot filled by Michael Ancher in the finished version, is Postmaster Schrøder, who is re-positioned to Henny’s left in the completed work. As Peter Michael Hornung notes of this sketch, although Henny was married to Hans Brodersen at the time,"he separated the spouses and placed the admired Henny Brodersen in the front left of the picture" (P.M. Hornung, Peder Severin Krøyer, Copenhagen, 2002, p. 351).
Krøyer gifted this sketch to Henny in the same year has he presented her with a ring. Both Henny and Anna Ancher remained close friends of the artist, and were at his side when he died.