“Fru Marie Krøyer i Haven paa Skagen”. Marie Krøyer in the garden in Skagen. Signed and dated S.K. 22 Juni 1892. Oil on panel. 23×33 cm. H. Chr. Christensen, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of P. S. Krøyer, 1923, no. 513. Literature: Marianne Saabye, ”Stemningsmaleri og impressionisme” in the exhibition catalogue ”Krøyer i internationalt lys”, 2011/12, mentioned p. 116 and p. 146 and ill. p. 116. Provenance: Waldemar Triepcke (1868–1932, Marie Krøyer's brother) (1923). Bruun Rasmussen auction 727, 2003 no. 1264, ill. p. 71. Sothebys, Scandinavian Sale, London, 27 June 2007 no. 397, ill. p. 69. The collection of the Norwegian businessman Petter Olsen. The present work, dated 1892, is from a very happy period of Krøyer's life, when love and art flourished. Marie Triepcke (1867–1940) and Peder Severin Krøyer had married in 1889, and in addition to being an artist in her own right, Marie also became Krøyer's muse and favorite model. After a long honeymoon trip to Italy, from which several studies from both are known, the couple returned to Denmark in 1891, and that summer and the following two summers rented Madame Bendsen's house on Skagen, in whose garden the painting was painted. One of Krøyer's most famous works, “Summer evening at Skagen” (The Glyptotek Inv. No. MIN905, deposited at The Art Museums of Skagen), also dates from the summer of 1892, depicting Marie Krøyer with the dog Rap by her side standing in a long light summer dress at the water's edge on Skagen beach with the deep blue moonlit sea in the background. Here, the very special evening atmosphere at the beach - 'l'heure bleue' - which was to epitomize Krøyer's art from the period, is presented in its purest form. The work became a highlight in Krøyer's oeuvre, and it was enthusiastically received when it was exhibited at the 'Exposition de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts' in Paris in 1894. In the years 1877–79, Krøyer was a student of the French painter Léon Bonnat (1833–1922) in Paris, and Krøyer's many letters bear witness to how important contemporary French art, and not least Impressionism, was to his development as a painter. In Paris, he was surrounded by several of the leading Impressionists and exhibited, among others, together with Claude Monet (1840–1926) at the prestigious exhibition “Exposition Internationale de Peinture” in the gallery Georges Petit in 1884, and two years later with Auguste Renoir (1841–1919 ), Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) and Alfred Sisley (1839–1899). Krøyer also tried to get several of the works of the French Impressionists to be included in the large French art exhibition in Copenhagen in 1888, but he was only successful to a limited extent - among other things, there was a single work by Monet. Because of his preoccupation with light and plein air painting and his ability to capture the moment with small, quick brushstrokes, Krøyer has often been described as an impressionist, and the present work is probably one of Krøyer's most fully-toned impressionist works. It is part of a small series of garden motifs from madam Bendsen's house with Marie Krøyer as model, which Krøyer painted in the early 1890s, of which “Roses” from 1893 (The Art Museums of Skagen Inv. No. SKM1851) is probably the best known. Here Marie Krøyer sits reading in a garden chair in Madam Bendsen's garden in Skagen under a huge blooming rosebush. But where in the other garden pictures from the period you can clearly see that the model is Marie Krøyer, in this painting her figure is transformed into an exclusively painterly figure who is present in the painting to bring life to the landscape and to play with the colours with her blue dress in contrast to the yellow sea of flowers and her yellow hat in contrast to the green trees in the background and as a flower in itself. Only the title reveals that it is Marie. With small, quick and visible brushstrokes, Krøyer has captured the light, the shadows, the colours and the elegant movement of the woman at the moment she bends down to pick a flower. She is an animated part of the nature. The sunlight catches the yellow dandelions in a clearing in the garden as a contrast to the shaded green grass of the foreground and left side, where several of the dandelions have deflowered and transformed into the characteristic beautiful white puff flowers. The diagonal path in the left corner gives the composition dynamism and is itself also almost lost in the grass. No sky is visible. It is a small condensed space where the play of light and shade makes everything vibrate and captures the fleeting moment.