On September 24, 2026, the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm opens the exhibition To the Sea! - a journey through how the beach became one of art history's most evocative subjects between 1870 and 1945. Among the artists featured are Claude Monet, Anders Zorn, Edvard Munch, and a Danish painter whose posters still make Swedish rooms breathe in the warmth of a summer evening: Peder Severin Krøyer. No one else has captured that brief moment when sky and sea merge into a single blue-tinted veil. This guide is about the man behind the light, why his most famous painting hangs in Gothenburg, and how you can bring home the same atmosphere with a poster on your wall.
Quick facts: P.S. Krøyer was born in 1851 in Stavanger and died in 1909 in Skagen. His most famous work, Hip hip hurra! Artists' Party at Skagen (1888), is now owned by the Gothenburg Museum of Art. Krøyer is one of the artists featured in the Nationalmuseum exhibition To the Sea!, September 24, 2026–February 7, 2027.
The painter of light from Skagen: what makes Krøyer impossible to mistake for anyone else
Most artists choose a subject. Krøyer chose a kind of weather. During the 1880s and 1890s, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish painters settled in the fishing village of Skagen, at the northern tip of Jutland, where two seas meet and the light behaves differently than elsewhere. It was here that Krøyer found the project of his life: to paint the moment when the day has just faded but night has not yet arrived. The Danes call it the blue hour, and Krøyer made it his signature.
What makes it unique lies not only in the choice of colors but also in the technique. Krøyer was trained in the French plein-air tradition and combined an almost photographic eye for composition with an ability to let outlines dissolve into haze. The women strolling along the shoreline in his works have no sharp edges - they seem almost to float in the damp air. That effect is hard to imitate, which is why a Krøyer poster is instantly recognizable: the muted, silvery blue-gray tone that no other period has quite managed to recreate.
The journey there led through Europe. Krøyer trained at the Copenhagen Academy of Fine Arts and then traveled to Paris, where he studied under the French master Léon Bonnat and absorbed the bright plein-air painting that the Impressionists were just then making the norm. He wandered through Spain, Italy, and Brittany before arriving in Skagen for the first time in 1882. His encounter with the light of the northern coast proved decisive: here he combined French technique with an atmosphere found only in the far north. Understanding that background enriches a Krøyer poster - what you hang on the wall is the result of an entire Europe filtered through a Danish fishing village.
Krøyer was also Denmark’s most talked-about portrait painter of his time and received prestigious commissions. But it is his beach scenes that have outlived him. When you hang one of them, you bring an entire art-historical movement into your home in miniature – one of the last great moments before modernism broke through.
Hip hip hurrah! – why a Danish summer party hangs in Gothenburg
Krøyer’s most famous painting depicts not the sea but a dinner party. Hip hip hurrah! Artists’ Party at Skagen from 1888 shows members of the artists’ colony gathered around a table beneath the fruit trees, glasses raised in a toast. Seated around the table are Danish and Nordic painters – among them the Swede Oscar Björck and the Norwegian Christian Krohg – a reminder that Skagen was a Nordic project rather than solely a Danish one.
The painting was shown at Charlottenborg in Copenhagen in 1888 and was later acquired by the Gothenburg Museum of Art, where it still hangs today. It is no coincidence that this particular work ended up in Sweden: the colony’s Swedish members and the lively art trade between neighboring countries meant that Nordic art moved freely across borders. For a Swedish viewer, it means you can stand before the original on a weekend in Gothenburg – and have a poster with the same sun-drenched mood on your wall at home for the rest of the year.
The painting did not come together in a single evening. Krøyer worked on the composition in several stages from the mid-1880s and had the company pose again and again to capture both the light and the mood – a patient process that explains why the scene feels both spontaneous and carefully composed at the same time. For Swedish art lovers, its proximity is a gift. While much of the rest of Skagen painting has remained in Denmark, in Gothenburg you can encounter the main work close to home, and the museum’s collection of Nordic turn-of-the-century paintings puts the festive scene in context.
"Krøyer did not paint places, he painted moments – and a moment of light never ages on a wall."
The festive scene says something important about why Krøyer works so well as art for the home. The paintings are about togetherness, long Nordic summer evenings, and that light we long for during half the year. These are feelings that fit just as well in a dining room in 2026 as they did at a Skagen table in 1888.
The Blue Hour: the brief moment when sky and sea become one
If one concept is to explain Krøyer, it is the blue hour. In works such as Sommaraften ved Skagens strand from 1899 – in which his wife Marie and her friend Anna Ancher walk in white along the water’s edge – the phenomenon appears in its purest form. The sea is mirror-still, the horizon has disappeared, and two female figures break up the cool monotony of blue. The image is almost empty, and yet everything happens in it.
Marie Krøyer and the story behind the paintings
Behind several of the best-known beach paintings is Marie Krøyer, the artist’s wife and one of the most talked-about beauties of her time. She was a trained painter herself and became both a model and a muse – the woman dressed in white by the water is often her. Their marriage eventually became unhappy and ended in divorce, and Krøyer’s final years were marked by mental illness that gradually impaired both his sight and his mind. Knowing this lends the tranquil evening scenes an undertone of melancholy: the light he pursued was as fleeting as the happiness he tried to hold on to. Perhaps it is precisely this tension between beauty and transience that makes the paintings continue to move people more than a hundred years later.
Why blue is restful on the eyes
There’s a reason these scenes feel so calming to live with. Most people find cool blues and grays soothing, and an image with few contrasts and soft transitions gives the eye something to rest on rather than work through. Krøyer’s beaches therefore work almost like a breathing space on the wall – a scene you can look at for years without tiring of it. If you’d like to read more about how nature scenes affect us, you can find a deeper dive in our post about nature scenes and stress reduction.
That also explains why Krøyer’s beaches work so well in rooms where you want to unwind. In a bedroom or reading nook, the scene works with the room rather than against it: the cool tones slow the pace, and the soft transitions don’t demand attention. Art like this becomes part of the room’s light and color palette, not a competing voice. That’s precisely why Krøyer’s work stands the test of time better than many more attention-grabbing scenes – there’s nothing in the image that wears out.
Tip: Krøyer’s blue hour comes into its own in soft lighting. Hang a beach scene poster where the evening light falls gently – beside a bed or above a sofa – and avoid harsh spotlights that disrupt the cool tone. A warm white bulb of around 2700 kelvin brings out the blue shades without making them feel cold.
Krøyer on Swedish walls in 2026 – rooms, formats and colors
Krøyer's palette is surprisingly easy to decorate with. The gray-green, sandy blonde and muted blue tones are close to the warm earth-tone palette shaping interior design in 2026, so a beach scene rarely feels out of place in a Nordic home. The key is to let the calm of the scene guide the room, rather than the other way around.
The bedroom and dining area
The blue hour works best in the bedroom. A larger print above the headboard, 50x70 or 70x100 centimeters, creates a horizon to fall asleep to. In the dining room, the festive scenes work better: Hip hip hurrah! and other social scenes invite conversation and complement the evening light of candles. Take a look at our guide to prints for the dining area for sizing and placement.
Color and frame choices
A slim frame in light wood or oak tones brings out the sandy areas, while a black frame sharpens the graphic quality of the horizon line. If you want to bring together a whole wall of Nordic art, Krøyer pairs beautifully with other Scandinavian art in our collection of Swedish artworks and the broader selection of art by famous artists. If you're looking for more seascapes and landscapes in the same spirit, you'll find them among our nature prints, and if you'd like to complement them with an atmospheric black-and-white look, there's photographic art.
Krøyer thrives in good company. A trio with a beach scene in the middle and two smaller prints on the sides recreates the very rhythm of his own compositions - calm in the center, life at the edges. If you want to create a whole gallery wall, his muted palette is a lovely place to start, since it almost always goes with what you already have.
There is also a seasonal argument. During the dark months, when Swedish homes need light the most, a Krøyer print becomes a kind of window onto brighter times - a reminder that one day the evenings will be long again. Many people therefore choose to hang the beach scene where it can be seen from the sofa or dining table, places where you sit still for a while and have time to sink into the image. Pair it with natural materials such as linen, wood and wool in muted tones, and the mood of the scene extends throughout the room, becoming something you live in rather than simply look at.
Frequently asked questions about P.S. Krøyer
P.S. Krøyer proves that a single light can sustain an entire artistic career. When the Nationalmuseum opens To the Sea! this autumn, it will be an opportunity to see the original works - but the blue hour need not stay in the exhibition hall. Explore our artworks by famous artists and find a beach scene that lets your wall breathe with a Nordic summer evening all year round. Read more about the exhibition at Nationalmuseum and learn more about Skagen painting at Skagens Kunstmuseer.