Dispel the Winter Blues with a Trip to the Seaside

Summer's long gone now.... gone and just a memory

Curling up in front of the fire with a good book, bingeing on a TV series box set or heading south is how you might normally try to get through the northern winter, but this year you could just go to Stockholm to dispel the chill. 

Yes, Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, because there you can immerse yourself in the delights of the long summer days on display in To the Sea! The Beach as Borderland and Summer Dream at the Nationalmuseum. Really, those Scandinavian coastlines are so tempting: What could be more attractive than A Stroll on the Beach at Skagen, at the very northern tip of Denmark?  

Here are five ladies enjoying Skagen's almost endless strand and endless skies, as painted by Michael Ancher (husband of Anna) in 1896. Luckily those hemlines were just off the ground, so as not to get dirty on the sand. 

This very wide-ranging exhibition in Stockholm explores the growth of seaside tourism in Europe and North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, not only as seen by painters, but also through advertising, fashion and film. There's a lot of fascinating social history, and a lot of fine art. Scandinavia and the Normandy coast are the main focuses, but of course we also take in that archetypal resort, Brighton, visited by John Constable and his ailing wife Maria for the benefit of the sea air, if not the weather. 

Across the Channel, it was more clement for a Regatta at Sainte-Adresse by Claude Monet. Half the canvas is taken up with a cloudy sky that together with the full sails on the boats suggest a strong sea breeze. Tourists are dotted on the beach watching the racing.

This was one of about 20 pictures Monet said he had under way when he spent a summer in Sainte-Adresse, a well-to-do suburb of Le Havre, his birthplace on the Normandy coast. On June 25, 1867, he wrote: "Among the seascapes, I am doing the regattas of Le Havre with many figures on the beach and the outer harbour covered with small sails." 

There are several gorgeous Monets in this show, depicting a view from the cliffs at Pourville near Dieppe, a fisherman's cottage at Varengeville, the beach at Trouville, and more. Edouard Manet's here too, depicting his wife and brother On the Beach. It's just under a year since we explored the delights of Etretat and its cliffs in a show in Lyon, and some of those same pictures are here in Stockholm too. 

Not this one by one of our favourite painters, Gustave Caillebotte, though, because this shows Trouville, west of Le Havre, from a high vantage point looking down on the new villas built for the well-heeled holidaymakers from Paris; a few brushstrokes in the sea depict the bathers. 

Trouville, Dieppe, Le Havre, Etretat, all just a few hours by train from Paris; the cost of rail tickets and accommodation, though, meant the pleasures of the seaside were reserved for the well-to-do.

But if you could afford it, how could you resist a few days at the beach on seeing this advertisement from 1925 by Helen Smith (of whom little seems to be known) for Printemps, the luxury department store in Paris. Have you got what you need for your trip?  

It looks so simple, but it's so clever -- those lines behind delineating the sand from the sea; the flying birds are a couple of brushstrokes and the big rim of her hat is just an outline. There is no doubt it's a sunny day and you can clearly see which direction the sun is coming from -- look at the bright white on the bucket, spade and arm and the strength of the shadow she's casting.

But let's head back north to Skagen, where different rules seem to apply. The youngsters below don't appear to need to buy anything from Printemps to enjoy themselves; they're happily skinny-dipping in the sea. Peder Severin Krøyer captures the fun watched rather enviously by a little girl in Summer Day on Skagen's Southern Beach in 1884. 

Most impressive is the skilful depiction of the light on different surfaces. The shimmering silver glow of the distant water, the glazed look of the smooth shallows, the white froth ripples gently lapping the shore and the harsh white of the laundry drying on the boats on the right. We must try to get to Skagen for that magical light, as depicted by Krøyer again in the picture of his wife Marie and Anna Ancher strolling along the beach. 

We're in Sweden, though, so it's time to mention the Swedes. We saw a big Anders Zorn show a few months ago, and there's a couple of his pictures here of young women taking a dip from the rocks of the archipelago around Stockholm. Rather more space, though, is given to the largely Scandinavian early 20th-century Vitalism movement, focused on young men baring all in natural settings. There's a distinct homoerotic element to this, as evidenced by clothed artist Eugène Jansson's Self-Portrait surrounded by some naked admirers in the navy bathhouse, which was situated just a stone's throw away from the Nationalmuseum. 

Rather a creepy image, you might think. But the muscular male body, inspired by Classical Greece and Rome, was the ideal at the turn of the century, and was achieved by physical exercise and sunbathing.

Our next Swedish swimmers are rather more covered up. This is Gösta Adrian-Nilsson's Bathing (Summer Evening) from 1926, featuring distinct Cubist and Futurist influences. These muscled men resemble machines heading out to tackle the waves.

This is one of the few really striking works in a couple of rooms dedicated to Scandinavian artists where this exhibition flags a little. We couldn't work up too much enthusiasm for the Halmstad Group of Swedish Surrealists....

But we can't ignore the Germans at the seaside; there's the Impressionist Max Liebermann, constant recorder of leisure activities on the Dutch North Sea coast, and the Expressionist Max Beckmann, stuck seemingly forever on the same shore as he tried to escape the Nazis. Beckmann, we learn, sometimes mixed sand into his paintings to convey a feel of the beach; there's sand in some of Monet's too, blown onto the canvas as he painted en plein air. 

Here's our favourite German beach view, though, by Berlin-born Jeanne Mammen. 

So sharply observed, it really made us smile. There is a lot of very white flesh sizzling in the sun, particularly on the bodies of the corpulent couple at the front with their very small dog. He may be scanning the share prices in his newspaper; Mammen drew this in the summer of 1929, so the Wall Street Crash is yet to come. 

But finally, the grim reality. This is probably not that sunny day on the beach you may have been wishing for to dispel the winter blues. Imagine trying to find a space for your towel here on Coney Island in 1933 as depicted by Harry Roseland. On the upside you'd only need a flannel, not a full-sized beach towel, to mark your spot, as there seems to be a trend to stand.  

Harry wasn't exaggerating. They often had 1 million people on the beach at Coney Island, and there's photos by Weegee (click on the image in the link to get the full effect)  and contemporary film footage to prove it. 

As we've seen, though, there are many nicer beaches to visit in Stockholm this winter. Now, where did you put your sun cream? 

Practicalities

To the Sea! The Beach as Borderland and Summer Dream is on at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm until February 7. It's open from 1100 to 1700 Tuesday to Sunday, with lates on Thursday to 2000. Full-price admission to the museum, including all exhibitions, is 160 kronor, which is just £12, and it's free on Thursday evening after 1700, which gives you enough time to see this show; we spent about two hours in the exhibition. Be warned that the motion sensors to alert the guards if you get too close to the paintings seem to have been set to go off at the merest hint of a pointed finger; the beeping is irritatingly frequent.

The Nationalmuseum is on Blasieholmen, just across the water from the Royal Palace and Old Town. It's about a 20-minute walk from Stockholm Central station. Kungsträdgården is the nearest metro station at the eastern end of the blue line, about 5 minutes walk away. 

Images

Michael Ancher (1849-1927), A Stroll on the Beach, 1896, Skagens Museum
Claude Monet (1840-1926), Regatta at Sainte-Adresse, 1867, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894), Trouville, the Beach and the Villas, 1882, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Photo: Anna Danielsson/Nationalmuseum

Helen Smith (active 1920s), Poster for Printemps, Paris, c. 1925, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris 
Peder Severin Krøyer (1851-1909), Summer Day on Skagen's Southern Beach, 1884, Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen 

Eugène Jansson (1862-1915), Self-Portrait, 1910, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Photo: Nationalmuseum

Gösta Adrian-Nilsson (1884-1965), Bathing (Summer Evening), 1926, Private collection
Jeanne Mammen (1890-1976), Beach, 1929, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Harry Roseland (1867-1950), Coney Island, 1933, Terra Foundation for American Art