Christian Krohg: The People of the North

The policeman guarding the door to the doctor’s office and the lavishly dressed sex workers queuing outside it all openly glare and whisper about the newcomer, Albertine. She is dressed in old, rumpled clothes and her head is hung in embarrassment as she tries to make herself as inconspicuous and as small as possible. Do you judge her too? The socially conscious Christian Krohg, who initially trained as a lawyer, demanded more of the people of Kristiania, known today as Oslo, through his monumentally scaled and career-defining painting Albertine to See the Police Surgeon (1885–87).

In March 1887, the furore surrounding the painting as it finally went on public display drew impassioned and curious crowds. The scene that greeted them like a revelatory break in the fourth wall confirmed what many suspected: the open secret of state-enabled sex work, which was illegal.

In 1886, Krohg’s novel Albertine was published because he couldn’t find a venue to display his paintings of Albertine. Her story, a conflation of those heard from the sex workers he used as models for his paintings, is of an unwed, working-class seamstress, amorously pursued and then raped by a police superintendent. Afterwards, he forces her to visit the police doctor for an invasive gynaecological exam that the city’s sex workers had to submit to, to curb the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. As a result, her life unravels, forcing her into sex work.

Tellingly, the day after the novel was published, the Ministry of Justice ordered the police to confiscate all copies of the book because it violated moral decency. Eventually, Krohg’s novel did affect change. But more immediately it ignited a fierce debate surrounding freedom of expression that played out across national newspapers, defining who Krohg was.

Now, in the first exhibition dedicated to Krohg outside Scandinavia, on view at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the curators seek to bring awareness to Krohg more broadly as an artist, and to situate him within the wider context of the established canon of nineteenth-century French painting.

The survey is divided into galleries based on themes rather than following a strict chronological order. A Farewell (1876) offers a powerful entrée, clearly illustrating the fertile ground between Impressionism and realism that Krohg liberally explored and tested the limits of. It is a touching portrait, showing the artist’s elderly aunt and young sister in a tender, bittersweet moment.

However, in the first room, two visual references to Gustave Caillebotte in Krohg’s Portrait of the Swedish painter Karl Nordström (1882) and Look ahead, Bergen Harbour (1884) reveal the limits of his technical ability. While the works share a very similar structure and subject matter, Krohg just doesn’t possess the same painterly prowess that Caillebotte does. This alerts us to the context of the Musée d'Orsay, which reinforces the notion that Krohg is a good painter, always pushing himself, rather than a gifted painter. An exception to prove this, Struggle for Existence (1889), is seen further on, a stalwart of the survey that more than holds its own in the wider environment of the museum.

But this fact is given a soft landing as the survey leans into the artistic drive behind Krohg’s work, the same drive that saw him write Albertine when he couldn’t find a venue to display the related paintings. In organising the rooms based on theme, we endearingly see his perseverance and determination, a small victory here, a failure there, as he relentlessly experimented with modes of seeing.

One key early victory that had an indelible and lasting influence came in 1879 when he first started painting fishermen in the village of Skagen, in northern Denmark. The fishing community had become a well-known spot for painting en plein air for Scandinavian artists in an Impressionist vein. Here, Krohg learnt how to use cropping to dramatic effect, adopting the mantra “It all depends on the cropping.” In Port your Helm!(1879), The Barre under the wind! (1882) and North Wind (1887), he used this with energetic, impasto brushwork to emphasise the physicality and extreme dangers fishermen faced as they braved the elements.

Throughout the remainder of the exhibition, consisting largely of portraits of friends, family, and works pertaining to social issues, Krohg’s preternatural ability to convey character shines forth. In August Strindberg (1893), the brooding subject glowers back at us, while a moment of chipperness appears in Portrait of editor-in-chief Ola Thommessen (1884), a smile poised to break out across his face. Often there are mesmerising passages of highly accomplished brushwork, particularly when Krohg models subtle changes in skin tone, such as blushed cheeks in Portrait of the Painter Gerhard Munthe (1885) and Portrait of Constance Bruun (1885). But ultimately the majority of these portraits lacks the painterly finesse that allows them to operate as stand-alone paintings; instead, they feel more like well-executed character studies.

In the paintings that operate sharply as social critique such as Sick Girl (1881), Madeleine (1883), and Albertine to See the Police Surgeon(1885–87), this raison d'être elevates them to powerful, achieved paintings. However, in Struggle for Existence (1889), Krohg’s technical skill and intention meet harmoniously in an acme where he captures lightning in a bottle.

Towering over us, at nearly ten feet tall, the painting confronts us with a haunting scene. In the depths of winter, a group of starving women and small children in patchwork clothes are seen on the very left of the composition, towards the bottom, as they swarm around an unseen baker giving out stale bread. They are rendered in precise yet lively, virtuosic brushwork. Struggle employs an asymmetrical structure, enhanced by the already tight crop enforced by the tall, narrow canvas; the right side, depicting the snow-covered inclining road and surrounding city architecture, is free to showcase more fluid, elongated brushwork. Above, Krohg renders the expanse of thick, smog-filled sky with a Claude Monet-like kaleidoscope of colourful inflections of dappled light. It is a heart-wrenching and seductively beautiful tour de force and a gripping testament to the determination of the human spirit.

First published by The Brooklyn Rail
https://brooklynrail.org/2025/06/artseen/christian-krohg-the-people-of-the-north/