1852 -1925 · Norwegian realism, social justice and modern framing

Workers, sailors, marginalized women and portraits without distance make Christian Krohg a painter of social truth as much as an inventor of the modern gaze.

Christian Krohg was born in Vestre Aker in 1852. Intended by his family for law, he completed his legal studies in Kristiania before choosing painting. He trained in Karlsruhe then followed Karl Gussow to Berlin, where the big city lastingly awakened his social conscience. In 1879, he discovered Skagen in Denmark. While other artists mainly sought landscape and light there, Krohg became attached to the inhabitants: fishermen repairing their nets, families cutting bread, sleeping children and women at work. He returns several times to these models, sharing their daily lives enough to avoid the picturesque. In Kristiania, his realism becomes openly engaged. He paints the seamstresses exhausted, the poor crowd waiting for bread and the women subjected to police control of prostitution. His Albertine cycle, accompanied by a novel banned upon its publication, provokes a national debate. In Albertine in the police doctor's waiting room, the compressed perspective and tight bodies make one feel institutional humiliation. Krohg considers that art must participate in public discussion: truth matters more than decorative beauty. Journalist, writer and lawyer, he belongs to Kristiania's bohemian circle and defends freedom of expression. However, his art is not limited to denunciation. His portraits of Erik Werenskiold, Gerhard Munthe or Oda Krohg show an exceptional ability to grasp character. Influenced by photography, he favored abrupt framing, figures seen from behind and surprised gestures, as if the viewer were entering the scene. From 1901 to 1909, he lived mainly in Paris and taught at the Colarossi Academy; his touch became freer and his contours more diffuse. In 1909, he became the first director and professor of the new Norwegian Academy of Fine Arts, a position he retained until his death in 1925. His work united commitment, empathy and formal innovation: looking closely already became a way of doing justice. The "Christian Krohg" selection includes opposite The Struggle for Existence and Portrait of Erik Werenskiold. His reading favors the material.

For Krohg, framing means choosing a side: bringing the viewer closer to a life that society prefers to keep off-camera.