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

Christian Krohg – painter, intellectual, activist and journalist – was a central figure on the Norwegian scene at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. In the wake of Scandinavian naturalism, embodied in particular by the playwright Henrik Ibsen, Krohg transposed the major social debates of his time into his works. His paintings pay homage to the most vulnerable: from fishermen struggling against the elements to the wretched folk and the prostitutes of the big cities. It was to the latter that he dedicated his masterpiece Albertine, an unprecedented fusion of art and literature.

The empathy he felt for his models was the vehicle he chose to reach the widest possible audience. Krohg was certainly cosmopolitan, having studied in Germany, lived several times in Paris and travelled constantly, becoming one of the leading painters of the Skagen artists' colony in Denmark. An admirer of the realists, the impressionists and Manet, he fully embodied the pictorial trends of his time. It is therefore quite natural that he should find his place in the Musée d'Orsay. This retrospective, organised in partnership with the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, is the first outside Scandinavia. Following exhibitions devoted to Edvard Munch, who was Krohg's pupil, and Harriet Backer, the Musée d'Orsay is once again shining new light on Norwegian art.

For Krohg, art should touch the viewer and arouse empathy, through both form and content. After studying in Germany, his stay in France - in Paris and Grez-sur-Loing (Seine-et-Marne) - led him further along this path. From Gustave Courbet, he drew social inspiration; from Edouard Manet, he borrowed pictorial devices to involve physically the viewer in the painting: figures with their backs to the foreground, figures fully absorbed in their task, gazing directly at the viewer.

But what Krohg particularly took from Manet and impressionists like Gustave Caillebotte was the daring approach to framing that created the illusion of fragments of life taken at random. He went so far as to make this his slogan: “It all depends on the cropping”. For him, the image should not be assembled in terms of perspective. Sitting in front of his subject, he painted in intense proximity. Krohg applied these principles throughout his career, particularly in his paintings of sailors, eschewing the landscape in favour of close-ups of the action.

Back in Norway in 1882, Krohg became one of the leaders of the “Kristiania Bohemia”. This small circle of artists, intellectuals and students - including the painters Edvard Munch and Oda Krohg (née Lasson), and the writer Hans Jæger - shook up the Norwegian capital with their non-conformist lifestyles and radical ideas.

The Bohemia's great role models were the Danish critic Georg Brandes (1842-1927), whom Krohg would describe as one of the “few landmarks in his life”, and the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). Both sparked a range of social debates, in some cases European in scope, on urban poverty, prostitution, women's rights and religion.

As a painter as well as a writer and journalist, Krohg played his part in this movement known as “Modern Breakthrough” or Scandinavian naturalism. His aim was to produce art that could play a role in social progress, and to give a realistic portrait of his time, particularly through his many portraits of leading figures in Scandinavian cultural life.

In his writings and lectures, Krohg explained that art should play a social role, addressing a wide audience while tackling social issues. His works of purely social art were few in number, but they had a considerable impact on Norwegian society. This is partly due to the double scandal caused by Albertine, the novel, which was banned and confiscated by the police the day after its publication, and the painting.

Far from being idealised, these social paintings are dominated by a severe pessimism typical of literary naturalism. Krohg explores the way in which extreme poverty gives rise to prostitution, alcoholism, disease and death, reducing some lives to a "struggle for existence", as Charles Darwin put it. In fact, this is the title of Krohg's last great naturalist painting, Struggle for Existence, a poignant observation of a society incapable of helping its most vulnerable members.

In 1886, Krohg published Albertine, a realist novel that was immediately banned for offending public decency. In this work, he tells the story of a poor young girl who is intoxicated with alcohol and raped by a police officer, then summoned to the police station to undergo the gynaecological examination required of prostitutes at the time to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. These ordeals break her spirit and plunge her into prostitution, illustrating an implacable social determinism. Krohg denounces the unfair treatment meted out by the Norwegian authorities to these women, deprived of their freedom and with no law to protect them.

Controversy erupted in Norway in the wake of the novel's seizure, supported by thousands of citizens defending freedom of expression. In his defence speech in the Supreme Court, Krohg claimed that he based his story on a true account related to him by one of his models. Outraged, he felt it his duty to “shout it out to the world, so that everyone can hear it”. It also inspired his great painting Albertine in the Police Doctor's Waiting Room.

When Krohg discovered Skagen, in northern Denmark, in 1879, the people captivated him even more than the unique nature and the light. Three generations of the Gaihede family of fishermen became the main subject of his paintings. Krogh rarely painted them at work. He preferred to depict them at home, caring for each other, bound by tender relationships.

When Oda Lasson and Christian Krohg set up their own household in the late 1880s, their painting was directly affected. Oda portrayed Krohg as a loving father, the antithesis of the authoritarian, despotic figure that Bohemia railed against. Krohg portrayed Oda as a caring mother in moments of great intimacy - breastfeeding, reading in the evening - the antithesis of her sulphurous reputation.

These family scenes are in keeping with Krohg's great social compositions: a painting of solicitude, the ideal of a society capable of looking after its most vulnerable members, and the strength of intra-family relationships.