This photo was taken in the dining room in Brøndrums Hotel which was a meeting place for the Skagen painters. Anna Ancher (centre) who is today the best-known artist of the group, was the daughter of the owners and the only member to come from Skagen. They all donated paintings and portraits to decorate the dining room which was moved in its entirety to the Skagens Museum in 1946 where it can still be examined by visitors.

We have the Skagen Painters on the Post this week, thanks to a fascinating exhibition at the Skagens Museum at the very tip of Denmark's Jutland peninsula. Like Newlyn in Cornwall, the small fishing village of Skagen attracted painters who came in the 1870s and 1880s for the light, landscape, and local subjects. The exhibition is the first there to show the group's own photographs from the museum's extensive collection. It was a tightly knit artists' colony and they took many photographs of each other - possibly their favourite subjects - in idyllic Danish summer settings, thus establishing a strong group identity. This is Henny Broderson with her daughters.

Hannah Ryggen is widely recognised as an important artist in Scandinavia, but is less well-known elsewhere including the UK, despite a successful exhibition of her work at Modern Art Oxford in 2017 (and excellent reviews). She herself looked beyond her small farm and was fully aware of international politics and culture. This is Poem by TS Eliot (1952) which includes translated lines from "Little Gidding" (1942) and Ryggen herself, with yarn and weaving shuttle in her hands.  

In the 1930s and 1940ss, Hannah Ryggen creates a series of large-scale anti-fascist tapestries. As The Met says, "Despite her remote location, she was remarkably attuned to the political tumult of her time, and her narrative textiles fiercely critique authoritarianism, war, and abuses of power. Her practice, steeped in representation, pushes against the notion that textiles are a craft based on patterns and decoration." When the war came to Norway in 1940, Ryggen's husband was arrested and sent to Grini prison camp where he was forced to paint warning signs for minefields, as depicted in Grini (1945). 

The National Museum in Oslo calls Hannah Ryggen an "eternal activist" who, with her textile art, "fought against war, abuse of power and social injustice". This is Fishing in the Sea of Debt (1933) which depicts the devastating impact of debt and economic hardship on individuals and families, particularly the fishing community of Ørlandet, during the 1930s economic depression. A rich woman enjoys lunch, a banker sits with his fishing line on the surface of the sea which drags down a father and his drowning children, and a doctor takes the last coin of a dead man who lies on the ground nearby. A bleak but true impression of contemporary life for many Norwegians.

Hannah Ryggen used wool from her own sheep which she carded, spun, and dyed with natural dyes made from locally foraged plants, lichens, and bark. Ryggen did not work from sketches or plans, but created her compositions directly on the loom with a variety of weaving techniques, resulting in simplified figures set against striking organic and geometric patterns. This is "Ja, vi elsker" (1950, Trondheim), a title taken from the opening words of the Norwegian national anthem.