Christian Krohg's Naturalism

The Norwegian painter, novelist, and social critic Christian Krohg (1852–1925) is best known for his highly political paintings of workers, prostitutes, and Skagen fishermen of the 1880s and for serving as a mentor to Edvard Munch. One of the Nordic countries’ most avant-garde naturalist artists, he was highly influenced by French thinkers, including Emile Zola, Claude Bernard, and Hippolyte Taine, and shocked the provincial sensibilities of his time. Krohg’s work reached beyond the art world when his book Albertine and its related paintings were banned upon publication. The story of a young seamstress who turns to a life of prostitution, it galvanized support for outlawing prostitution in Norway, but Krohg was punished for its sexual content.

In Christian Krohg’s Naturalism, Oystein Sjastad examines the theories of Krohg and his fellow naturalists and their reception in Scandinavian intellectual circles, viewing Krohg from an international perspective and demonstrating how Krohg’s art made a striking contribution to European naturalism. In the process, he provides the definitive account of Krohg’s art in the English language.

Oystein Sjastad is associate professor of art history in the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo. He is the author of Christian Krohg: Fra Paris til Kristiania and A Theory of the Tache in Nineteenth-Century Painting.