Hip, Hip, Hurrah!

Peder Severin Krøyer painted this from memory of a specific July afternoon in 1884, when the Skagen Painters and their friends gathered in Michael and Anna Ancher's garden for a lunch that ended in champagne. Every figure is a real person — Anna Ancher on the right, her husband Michael standing, Krøyer's wife Marie at the back, the writer Holger Drachmann and his family, the painter Christian Krohg. It took Krøyer four years to finish it: he wanted to capture the specific quality of the Skagen midsummer light. The Gothenburg museum bought it in 1902. Now at Göteborgs konstmuseum, Gothenburg @goteborgs_konstmuseum