Michael Peter Ancher was born at
Rutsker on the island of
Bornholm in the Baltic. The son of a local merchant, he attended school in
Rønne but was unable to complete his secondary education as his father ran into financial difficulties, forcing him to fend for himself. In 1865, he found work as an apprentice clerk at Kalø Manor near
Rønde in eastern
Jutland. The following year, he met the painters
Theodor Philipsen and
Vilhelm Groth who had arrived in the area to paint. Impressed with his early work, they encouraged him to take up painting as a profession. In 1871, he spent a short period at C.V Nielsen's art school as a preliminary to joining the
Royal Danish Academy of Art in
Copenhagen later in the year. Although he spent some time at the academy, he left in 1875 without graduating. One of his student companions was
Karl Madsen who invited him to travel to
Skagen, a small fishing village in the far north of Jutland where
Skagerrak and
North Sea converge. From the mid-1870s, he and Madsen became key members of a group of artists who congregated there each summer, known as the
Skagen Painters. After Ancher first visited Skagen in 1874, he settled there joining the growing society of artists. The colony of painters regularly met in the
Brøndums Hotel in Skagen in order to exchange ideas. In 1880 Ancher married fellow painter and Skagen native
Anna Brøndum, whose father owned the Brøndums Hotel. In the first years of their marriage, the couple had a home and studio in the "Garden House", which is now in the garden of the Skagens Museum. After the birth of their daughter
Helga in 1883, the family moved to Markvej in Skagen. ==Career==