Self-portrait

Krøyer painted this in 1888, in the middle of the years that made his name. He was the leading figure among the Skagen painters, a group who gathered at the northern tip of Denmark to work in the long pale light of its beaches, and that same year he was finishing 'Hip, Hip, Hurrah!', his sunlit picture of the whole colony raising a toast in a garden. This self-portrait is a quieter thing. It later joined the Uffizi's gallery of artists' self-portraits in Florence, the collection that had been asking painters across Europe to show themselves for centuries. Krøyer's eyesight and health would fail him badly in his last years, but here he is at full strength, looking steadily back at whoever stands before the canvas.