A nude in the moonlight.

A Nude in the Moonlight by Laurits Tuxen, dated around 1900, places the female nude within the nocturnal coastal landscape that he painted frequently at Skagen. The moonlit nude at the sea's edge belongs to a venerable tradition — the bathing goddess, the nymph by the shore — but in Tuxen's hands it takes on a more direct, plein-air quality, the mythological figure grounded in observed moonlight rather than classical convention. Such works allowed him to combine his skills in academic figure painting with the landscape observation that occupied much of his time at the Skagen colony.

Tuxen renders the nude under moonlight using a cool, blue-white palette that suppresses the warm flesh tones conventional in studio nude painting and replaces them with the cooler reflected light of night. The figure is modelled with idealized academic care while the surrounding sea and sky are handled more loosely.