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MADEIRA PERIOD
1946 - 1947
The five war years
Skov spent in Bakkeboelle had not provided him opportunities for
interaction with other artists, and the workload required to operate the
small farm in order to sustain the family had been exhausting and
confining. He therefore decided to sell the farm and leave Bakkeboelle with
his family in the spring of 1946, bound for Portugal. He needed to recapture a sense of freedom and
autonomy, and to renew his artistic inspiration; and he wanted to
experience again the brilliant colors he had enjoyed during his visits to
the sub-tropical Southern
France before the war. France, however, remained relatively expensive for
visitors, and Italy was in the depth of a serious post-war
depression. Portugal on the other hand, was considerably less ravaged
by the war, and Skov had heard about its romantic setting and pleasant
climate from his brother, who had visited Lisbon and Madeira as a
ship’s captain. Skov
embarked with his family by ship from Aalborg, Denmark to Lisbon in March. After a two months wait in Estoril, he
obtained a cabin for the family on board ship to Funchal, Madeira where he arrived in late June after a stormy
passage in the midst of a mid-Atlantic hurricane. Finding that housing was
scarce and expensive in Funchal, he rented temporarily a small cottage in
Cancela, a tiny nearby mountain village with a magnificent view from the
mountainside out over the ocean towards the south. Just four months later,
Skov was finally able to locate a more adequate home for the family in Santa Cruz, the second largest town on the island, and he
relocated immediately. The voyage from Bakkeboelle to Santa Cruz had
consumed the better part of six months, and it was late September before
Skov could again return to a more normal life and start to concentrate on
his painting.
Santa Cruz was at the time a small, somnolent town centered around a principal church. It
could boast of just a single grade school, but no high-school and no
theater or movie-house, only one taxicab and only four daily bus
connections to Funchal. At the principal church, Skov discovered in October
a beautiful, authentic, but quite neglected antique altarpiece painting of
"The Adoration of Virgin Maria" by an unknown artist, dating from
about 1780 - 1790. It measured 135 x 165 cm and had a quite distinctive
design, however the colors had darkened as a result of many years of
accumulated soot from votive candles and the paint had flaked and was in
places badly deteriorated. This was an immediate challenge for Skov’s
craftsmanship and sense of professionalism; and he therefore offered to
restore the painting as a gesture of goodwill. As he carefully undertook
the delicate task, he was putting to use his previous
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