Roses

This work shows Marie Krøyer, the artist's wife, seated in a deckchair under a large rose bush in the garden of a house they rented in Skagen, with their dog Rap asleep beside her. It is one of a number of paintings, photo studies and sketches that Krøyer made between 1891 and 1894 while he and his wife were renting a house from Madam Bendsen in Skagen's Vesterby; its full title is often given in English as some close variation on Roses. Marie Krøyer seated in the deckchair in the garden by Mrs Bendsen's house. One of the sketches on a similar theme is in the Skagens Museum, and the Hirschsprung Collection has a couple of photographs taken around the same time. Roses was completed in the same year as Summer Evening on Skagen's Southern Beach which shows Marie and Anna Ancher strolling on the beach as the sun sets. In Roses the treatment of the light and shadow shows the influence that the French Impressionist movement had on Krøyer. The foreground is dominated by the huge exuberant Alba Maxima rosebush which obscures most of the house in the background.