P. S. Krøyer's paintings of Marie

The first few years of their marriage were reasonably happy, leading to the birth of their daughter Vibeke in 1895, but as a result of P. S. Krøyer's periods of mental illness, by the early 1900s they spent ever more time apart.

Peder Severin Krøyer (1851–1909), who was born in Stavanger, Norway, but brought up in Copenhagen, first arrived in Skagen in 1882 and returned almost every summer.

[1] He had already gained a reputation for his paintings of the fishermen in Hornbæk on the north coast of Zealand and had been influenced by the Impressionist movement during his travels to France.

[3][4] Krøyer had visited the atelier where Marie was studying on several occasions, but the first of his works in which she appears is A Duet, painted in Heinrich Hirschsprung's Copenhagen home in 1887 where she had been invited to model for him.

Rather than joining the artists' colony in Skagen directly, the Krøyers chose to spend their honeymoon alone in the little fishing village of Stenbjerg in Thy in the northwest of Jutland.

They also visited the artist Kristian Zahrtmann who spent his summers in the house he had bought in Civita d'Antino, high up in the mountains in the Abruzzo region some 150 km (90 miles) south of Rome.

[12] From 1891 to 1894, they spent their summers renting Madam Bendsen's house in Skagen Vesterby where the writer Otto Benzon paid them a visit in 1893.

The following year, it was added to the frieze in the dining room at Skagen's Brøndums Hotel which had become the artists' favourite meeting place.

[14] The dining room was designed by the architects Ulrik Plesner and Thorvald Bindesbøll in connection with the first major expansion of the hotel in 1892.

The painting is interesting in that its treatment of light and shadow shows how Krøyer had been influenced by the French Impressionists while he was in Paris.

[16] Marie, framed by the overhanging roses, is shown reading a newspaper; to her left is another empty deckchair which was probably where Krøyer would have sat.

The moon's reflection adds a slight feeling of depth to the otherwise flat background which consists mostly of the monolithic blue sea.

Marie is depicted as being at a similar height to the viewer, but the horizon rises above her head, emphasizing her radiance against the muted, nearly monochrome background.

[19] In 1895, Krøyer wrote to his friend Oscar Björck: "I am also thinking of painting a large portrait of my wife and me together — but for that I shall definitely need good weather, so it won't be this year."

Krøyer particularly appreciated "l'heure bleue": "Skagen can look so terribly dull in the bright sunlight ... but when the sun goes down, when the moon rises up out of the sea ... in recent years this has been the time I like most of all.

On returning to Sweden, he had begun a series of pictures of family life with his wife and children in Sundborn in the mid-1890s, publishing it as Ett hem (A home) in 1899.

[26] Marie is standing next to a fishing boat with her new lover, Hugo Alfvén, the Swedish composer,[27] just to the left of the flames that seem to stream towards them.

The preparatory pastel sketch on which it is based was produced in a couple of hours, but the painting was completed with difficulty as not only had Krøyer spent several lengthy periods in a mental hospital from 1900 but he had also begun to lose his sight, particularly in one eye.

[29] He was not altogether happy with the finished product; he thought it had become "too dark" and felt it did not capture the "pale radiance" of the sky over Skagen on Midsummer Eve.

[12] In contrast, writing in Kristeligt Dagblad, Morten Rasmussen reports that the work is considered by many to be Krøyer's "Magnum Opus", representing a reflection of his own life and a tribute to the people who contributed to his success.