The Skagenpainters

The Art Museums of Skagen is one museum with three locations in Skagen
– all focused on the Skagen painters.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Skagen became the centre of one of the most famous artists’ colonies in Europe, known as the Skagen painters. In the early days, it was generally the very young, less established artists who journeyed to the northern tip of the Jutland peninsula in Denmark. The first artists who came here at the beginning of the 1870s had met at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and recommended the town to one another. In Skagen, there was an abundance of plein-air motifs, the town had a local population who were usually willing to model for a modest fee, and social and professional fellowship was also a major factor for many artists.

The artists’ colony in Skagen was part of an international phenomenon. Artists came to Skagen from other countries and there were artists’ colonies in several other places in Europe, Russia, North America, and Australia at the time. The artists’ colony in Skagen was also visited by authors, composers, musicians, singers, craftspeople, and actors, several of whom were among the most prominent cultural personalities of the era in Denmark and Scandinavia.