P.S. Kroyer and Paris: French Connections and Nordic Tones

‘A lover of light’: in 1912, a French critic used these words to describe the great Danish painter Peder Severin Kroyer, who had close ties to the French art scene for more than two decades. Kroyer first visited Paris in 1877, and his many letters clearly show the impact French art had on Kroyer’s own development as a painter, on the artists’ colony in Skagen, and on danish art history in general.

In Kroyer and paris: French Connections and Nordic Colours, art historians Mette Harbo Lehmann and Dominique Lobstein describe Kroyer’s artistic development from the Golden Age tradition favoured by the Danish academy to Naturalism and the Modern Breakthrough. They show how inspiration from France can be traced in his painting technique and his open-air paintings from Skagen, reveling how French Naturalism made its mark on Kroyer’s distinctive style.