Oda Krohg

Biography

Oda Lasson first showed a painting in public in 1886: “By the Oslofjord (Japanese Lantern)” was accepted for the Autumn Exhibition in Kristiania. It is now in the National Gallery of Norway. The artist had no systematic schooling behind her.

She was born on 11 June 1860 into a well-to-do family, the daughter of the government attorney Christian Lasson. Her mother, Alexandra von Munthe af Morgenstierne, was the daughter of a Russian princess, Saltykova. There were ten children in the family. Her brother Per Lasson became a composer, and her sister Bokken Lasson a singer and writer. When Oda said she wanted to be a painter, her father, according to family tradition, replied: “You may begin, but if you have talent, you won’t be allowed.”

In 1881 she married the businessman Jørgen Engelhardt, who traded in timber and ice; they had two children. By 1883 Oda had left her husband and set up home separately with the children, though the divorce was formalised only in 1888. In 1885 she became a pupil of Erik Werenskiold and Christian Krohg. In the same year her daughter Nana was born; Christian Krohg was the father, and the child was born in Belgium and at first lived with a foster family. Oda and Krohg married in October 1888, after the divorce. In 1889 their son Per, later also a well-known painter, was born in Åsgårdstrand; Edvard Munch was his godfather.

Those years made her one of the central figures of the Kristiania Bohemians, together with Munch, Christian Krohg, Jappe Nilssen, Hans Jæger and Gunnar Heiberg. The press gave her the nickname “Queen of the Bohemians”, or the “Bohemian Princess”. Munch portrayed her among this circle in the etching “Café Interior” (1893). In his novel “Diseased Love” (1893), Hans Jæger described a love triangle of the summer and autumn of 1888; Oda is thought to have been the model for the heroine. It seems to me that this image long overshadowed the painter herself in people’s perception, and Norwegian writers make the same observation.

She also wrote prose but published little: in 1890 an extract from an autobiographical novel, “Moonlight”, appeared in a Copenhagen magazine. At her own wish, her manuscripts were burned after her death.

In the 1890s the Krohgs lived in Berlin. In 1893 Oda’s works were shown at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, in the Palace of Fine Arts. In the summer of 1897 she moved to Paris with her son Per and settled there with the playwright Gunnar Heiberg, and soon afterwards she obtained a studio in Montparnasse. Her husband soon took a post as a teacher at the Académie Colarossi. Among her acquaintances in Paris was Henri Matisse. From 1901 to 1909 the family lived in Paris. In 1903 Oda exhibited at the Salon, and in 1904 she held her first exhibition at the Salon d’Automne, in which she took part until 1909. In those years she had a relationship with the poet and critic Jappe Nilssen; then she returned to her husband, and the family moved to Oslo.

She is described as a painter of landscapes: besides the debut picture, there is “On the Meadow (Chinese Lantern)” (1889). Other known works are “A Subscriber to the Evening Post” (1887), “From the Party” (1892), “Rouge et Noir” (1912) and “Christian Krohg on Karl Johan” (1912). Her early pieces are usually classed as New Romantic, and her later portraits are firmer. She painted Aasta Hansteen, Ivar Arosenius, Gunnar Heiberg, Johanne Dybwad and Christian Krohg; of her own portrait Hansteen said: “She is a master.”

Oda Krohg died in Oslo on 19 October 1935. She was buried beside her husband at Vår Frelsers gravlund, in the section of honorary graves.