Anna Ancher och kvinnlighetens rum: en komparativ studie av Anna Anchers och Vilhelm Hammershøis genremotiv

Abstract

With Denmark’s modern breakthrough came an increasing number of female painters, among them Anna Ancher (1859-1935). A popular motif for artists of both genders at the turn of the twentieth century was the interior of the private home. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse how gender roles are displayed in Anna Ancher’s paintings of interiors with a lone female figure by comparison to Anna Ancher’s male contemporary Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916). The visual material was analysed by the method known as reception aesthetics. Griselda Pollock’s theoretical conceptions from Modernity and the spaces of femininity was used to understand the material from a feminist perspective. The results reveal that gender roles are both confirmed and negated in the paintings by Anna Ancher.