International studio (34.1908)

P. S. Kroyer, Danish Painter

they sit at the table, how illusionary the blending
of the double light, and what an indescribable
festivity pervades the entire scene !
Kroyer has perpetuated a number of interesting
gatherings and functions, amongst them the crowded
dinner table at hospitable Aulestad, Bjornstjerne
Bjornson’s home on the Gaus Valley, and others.
Mme. Bjornson did not exactly think it necessary
to display her ear-trumpet, but Kroyer, thinking it
quite belonged to her, and that it would not quite
be she without it, insisted upon depicting her with
it. From the same date hails the striking portrait
of Bjornstjerne Bjornson, the great Norseman
standing out like a chieftain against the picturesque
slopes that surround his home. Bjornson has
been painted times innumerable—five or six times
by von Lenbach, for instance—but Kroyer’s power-
ful picture ranks high amongst them all.
Although there have been no sudden revolu-
tionary changes in Kroyer’s methods of painting,
his artistic career has by no means been void of
evolution ; quite the contrary. Ease and freedom
and lightness of touch by degrees got the better of
his more stringent, academic methods, the out-
come of repeated study in one of the most famous
of Parisian studios ; and the somewhat dark and

sombre hues which are noticeable in some of his
earlier efforts, gave way to lighter and airier tones,
at one time carried almost to excess; and in the same
way, while at one time bidding fair to become a
pronounced realist, he has little by little allowed his
lyric temperament to prevail: many of his pictures,
from the Skaw more especially, having over them
an almost romantic mood. In much a child of
Danish naturalism, Kroyer’s open sense of the
beautiful and his joyous conception of the
picturesque, wherever his susceptible eye meets it,
bestows upon most of his work a peculiar charm,
as, for instance, his many sketches and pictures of
Skaw fishermen. There is a beauty over many of
these figures which it is difficult to define, but
which never fails to impress and delight. Without
violating that naturalism wffiich he has never quite
forsaken, his happy hand gives to half-pronounced
and intermediate shades and tones a suave and
subtle mellowness which is simply a feast to the
eye.
What seems more and more to have become a
favourite style with Kroyer are his big cartoons,
done with charcoal and one or more coloured
chalks ; in this way he has made a number of
admirable sketches, full of life and verve, portraits,