A wreck on Skagen Nordstrand, deep wheelmarks in the sand

Ribs of a broken ship stick up out of the sand like a row of blackened teeth, all that remains of a vessel that came to grief off Skagen, the sandy spit at the very top of Denmark. Peder Severin Krøyer painted this in 1894 and signed it in the lower left corner with the place and the year, a habit of his. The wide curving tracks in the foreground are the real subject the title points to: cart wheels, cut deep, made by locals hauling timber away. Wrecked wood was valuable on a treeless coast, and houses in Skagen were built from ships that never made it home.

Krøyer was the best known of the Skagen Painters, a group of Scandinavian artists who settled in the fishing town from the 1870s onward, drawn by the strange pale light where the Skagerrak and Kattegat meet. He is usually remembered for his blue evening scenes of women strolling by the water, so this grey, overcast stretch of beach shows a different side of him. The horizon sits low, the sea is barely a smudge of colour, and most of the canvas is simply sand and sky. It reads like something painted quickly and outdoors, more a record of a day's weather and a bit of local salvage than a grand statement.