Peder Severin Krøyer (1851–1909) was born on 23 July 1851 in Stavanger, Norway, to a single mother, but he grew up in Copenhagen with relatives and became a Danish painter. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Art and travelled in Europe in the late 1870s and early 1880s, meeting other artists and developing his own approach to light and colour.
In 1882 he first came to Skagen, on the northern tip of Denmark, and returned almost every summer, later settling there. He became the central figure of the Skagen Painters, the artists’ colony that brought plein-air light and an Impressionist touch into Danish art. He married the painter Marie Krøyer, who often appears in his paintings, and his best-known picture is Summer Evening on Skagen’s Southern Beach. His patron was the collector Heinrich Hirschsprung, whose collection in Copenhagen holds many of his works.
In his last years Krøyer suffered from mental illness and was admitted to hospital several times. He died in Skagen on 21 November 1909 and is buried there.