Christian Krohg

Biography

In 1886 the Norwegian police confiscated the novel “Albertine”. Its author was Christian Krohg, and the heroine of the book, a poor seamstress forced to sell herself, waited her turn in the waiting room of a police doctor. He painted the same scene in oil.

Krohg was born on 13 August 1852 in Vestre Aker, which is now part of Oslo. His mother died when he was eight, and the children were brought up by his father’s sister. His father, a jurist, civil servant and newspaper writer, insisted that his son study law, and in 1873, the year his father died, Krohg took his law degree. He studied drawing alongside: in 1869–1870 at the school of Johan Fredrik Eckersberg, then at the Royal Drawing School. Then came Germany. In Karlsruhe, at the Baden School of Art, his teachers were Hans Gude and Karl Gussow, and from 1875 he worked under Gussow at the Royal Academy in Berlin. There he met Max Klinger and Georg Brandes; their influence helped him become a naturalist painter. His first public work was the painting “A Farewell” (1876). In the summer of 1879, on the advice of Frits Thaulow, Krohg first came to Skagen, the Danish colony of Scandinavian artists, and returned there in 1882–1884 and 1888. He painted fishermen and sailors and played a notable part in the careers of Anna and Michael Ancher. In 1881–1882 he worked in Paris, where he was influenced by Manet and Bastien-Lepage, and by the French naturalist writers, above all Zola and Maupassant. “The Sick Girl” (1881) dates from the early 1880s. Around the same time he began to teach, and among his pupils was the young Edvard Munch.

Krohg took his subjects from everyday life, more often from its darker side. “The Struggle for Existence” (1889) shows a handout of free bread to the poor. The novel “Albertine” caused a scandal in conservative Norway, and its author was charged with offending public morality.

From 1886 to 1890 he was the founder and editor of the Bohemian journal “Impressionisten” in Kristiania, and from 1890 to 1910 he wrote for the newspaper “Verdens Gang”. His articles and fiction were reissued in the early 1920s under the general title “The Struggle for Existence”.

From the 1880s Krohg was close to the painter Oda Lasson. Their daughter Nana was born in 1885, in 1888 they married, and their son Per, who also became a painter, was born in 1889.

In 1902–1909 he lived in Paris and taught at the Académie Colarossi. From 1907 he headed the association of Norwegian artists and remained in that post until 1925; he took part in founding the Autumn Exhibition. In 1909 he became the first professor and director of the State Academy of Art in Oslo. The French Legion of Honour (1889), the Belgian Order of Leopold (1894) and the Norwegian Order of St Olav (1900) show that he was as well known abroad as at home. Over his life he painted about fifty self-portraits. The last, “By the Window”, is dated to the year of his death. Krohg died in Oslo on 16 October 1925; he was buried at Vår Frelsers gravlund (Our Saviour’s Cemetery), and Oda was later laid beside him. A bronze statue of him was erected in Oslo in 1960, at the corner of Lille Grensen and Karl Johans gate.