Known for his portraits of European royalty, Laurits Tuxen (1853-1927) achieved exceptional stature during his lifetime. He was an artist who was constantly moving between countries and commissions, from coronations to weddings, from royalty to nobility and aristocracy – he exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1878, and he visited America three times. Although he passed through the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts like many successful artists of the time, he was more rebellious than most, helping his contemporaries to dismantle the monopolistic Charlottenborg exhibitionary circuit. For instance, in 1879 he was gifted state funding to provide a free alternative training to the Academy for burgeoning Danish artists. He also contributed to the creation of The Free Study Schools, alongside fellow artists August Andreas Jerndorf and Johan Georg Frans Schwartz. Combining French Academic realism with the skills he acquired from teaching in Demark, Tuxen pushed beyond portraiture into landscape, turning to the artists’ colony in Skagen during the summers following his marriage, for further artistic inspiration.