This week on the Post we are answering our own question, posed in July 2019: "The allotment. A magic word. Do they exist worldwide?" Certainly they do in other European countries. In France there are potagers (kitchen gardens with a mix of produce and flowers) and jardins ouvriers or jardins familiaux which are closer to allotments. And in some places such as Amiens there are hortillonages, floating gardens created in the Middle Ages from marshland, and accessed by a network of small canals which makes for a fascinating boat trip for visitors.

This is Sunlight in the Blue Room (1891, Skagens Museum) by Anna Ancher 1859-1935), a fine example of her use of colour and ability to capture the play of Skagen light in her domestic interiors. The full title explains it is her daughter Helga crocheting in a room in Brøndrums Hotel where her grandmother, Anna's mother, often sat. The Dulwich Picture Gallery is using this painting in the publicity for its Anna Ancher exhibition which opens on 4th November this year.

The Skagens Museum exhibition shows how the Skagen painters also used the new medium of photography to compose images which might later serve as the basis for paintings of locals, fishermen, and each other Here we see a photo of Michael Ancher (1849-1927) and PS Krøyer (1851-1909) which was used by Laurits Tuxen (1853-1927, in the background here) for his 1910 sculpture which has stood outside the Museum since 1928 (sadly, there is no figure of Anna Ancher).  

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.