Portrait of the Artist’s Father, the Innkeeper Erik Brøndum
This is the only known portrait of Anna Ancher’s father, Erik Brøndum. It is a bit of a puzzle why Anna Ancher only made one portrait of her father when there are countless portraits of her mother. Her father died first in 1890, and her mother only in 1916, when she was 90 years old, but this still doesn’t explain why there is only one known portrait of her father. Apart from being a go-between when artists wanted to use local fishermen as models, his life and livelihood have disappeared in the story of the Skagen painters. It is fairly characteristic of Anna Ancher, that in addition to portraying her father, she was also interested in portraying the colours and the play of light on the wall. There is a freshness about Anna’s pastels, which testifies to her daring to experiment with the many possibilities of the medium.
