Exhibition at the museum

Christian Krohg (1852-1925)
The People of the North

From March 25th to July 27th, 2025
Christian Krohg (1852-1925)
La Barre sous le vent ! [Hardt le], 1882
Oslo, National Museum
© Photo: Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design/ Jaques Lathion
The Musée d'Orsay's exhibition devoted to Norwegian artist Christian Krohg is the artist's first-ever retrospective outside Scandinavia, following several exhibitions in Oslo and Lillehammer in 2012, and Copenhagen in 2014. By highlighting Krohg's naturalistic and committed works, the museum offers a new perspective on Norwegian art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

hrough a comprehensive panorama of Krohg’s artistic career, the exhibition aims to highlight his pictorial modernity and humanist commitment. A true bohemian and ardent defender of the political and social causes of his day, Krohg, who was also a writer and journalist, depicted the Scandinavian people’s condition with profound empathy: the world of work, poverty, and the injustices suffered by women. 

The exhibition’s itinerary highlights Krohg’s pictorial connections with the French artists he got to know during his stays in Paris - including Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet and the impressionists. In his series of sailors, which he continued to add to throughout his life, as in his genre scenes and portraits, Krohg sought to give his works a feeling of immediacy by using unbalanced compositions, audacious framings and dynamic postures. His motto, “It’s all a question of framing”, was the basis for artistic research of unflinching modernity. A member of the provocative bohemian scene in Kristiania (as Oslo was then called), Krohg caused controversy and scandal among the bourgeoisie and artistic elites. The exhibition also includes portraits that the artist painted of members of that libertarian bohemian milieu, those young artists, writers and intellectuals who got together in the capital’s cafes and vehemently challenged the prevailing social structure.

A Norwegian Zola?

In 1886, Krohg published his novel <em>Albertine</em>, the story of a poor seamstress who becomes a prostitute after being raped – a novel that the police immediately confiscated on the grounds that it offended public morals. Despite the controversy, Krohg defended his freedom of expression against censorship. He went on to create his most important painting, the large-format canvas Albertine drawn from his novel, pushing provocation to the extent of employing prostitutes as models. Few Norwegian artworks have prompted such fierce debate, by spotlighting on a particularly grim facet of Norwegian society. Other major naturalist and socially committed compositions, such as <em>The Struggle for Survival</em>, bear witness to the attention the artist paid to society’s most vulnerable members. Finally, whether they depict the simple daily lives of Skagen’s inhabitants in Denmark or of his own family, his canvases evidence the artist’s interest in the private sphere. His works, which highlight the care that members of a family can provide each other with, are characterised by extraordinary gentleness and bear witness to his profound humanity. By making empathy central to his work, he succeeds in capturing the beholder’s attention in order to accomplish his ideal: “working for human progress.”

  1. Monday Closed
  2. Tuesday 9.30am - 6.00pm
  3. Wednesday 9.30am - 6.00pm
  4. Thursday 9.30am - 9.45pm
  5. Friday 9.30am - 6.00pm
  6. Saturday 9.30am - 6.00pm
  7. Sunday 9.30am - 6.00pm
Musée d'Orsay
Temporary Exhibition Area
Seine Gallery, level 0
Map & itinerary
Tarifs
Time slot full rate
€16
Time slot reduced rate
€13
Enfant & Cie
€13
Nocturne rate
€12
-18 year olds, -26 year old residents of the EEA
Free
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