COLLECTION NAME:
Visual Resources Teaching Collection
mediaCollectionId
ArtArtHiAAH~7~7
Visual Resources Teaching Collection
Collection
true
Image Record ID:
aahi0000610
image_record_id
aahi0000610
Image Record ID
false
Work Title (display):
Naked Old Woman Sitting on a Chair
Image Title:
full view
Work Dates (display):
1902
Work Dates type:
creation
Work Creator (display):
Christian Krohg (Norwegian, 1852-1925)
Work Creator gender:
male
work_creator_or_agent_gender
male
Work Creator gender
false
Work Creator notes (display):
Painter, draughtsman and writer. While studying law at the University of Christiania (186973), he attended both Johan Fredrik Eckersberg's private art school (186970) and then the drawing class of Julius Middelthun at the Royal School of Drawing (187071). Having taken his degree in law, he went to the Kunstschule in Karlsruhe, where he studied under Hans Gude and then Karl Gussow (18431907). In 1875 he followed Gussow to the Akademie at Berlin. He remained there until 1878, becoming a close friend of Max Klinger, a fellow student, and also getting to know the Danish philosopher and writer Georg Brandes (18421927), who introduced him to contemporary French writers such as Emile Zola and did much to sharpen his awareness of social and political problems. The experience of Berlin, where Krohg lived in great poverty, complemented Brandes's arguments and gave a somewhat bitter and critical turn to Krohg's interest in the realistic recording of the city. Krohg also embarked on his career as a portraitist at this time. While his portrait of Lucy Eyeberg (1876; Oslo, N.G.) reveals an acute realist interest in costume, especially its varying textures, the portrait of Georg Brandes (18789; Skagen, Skagens Mus.) shows Krohg also capable of responding to a forceful and fascinating personality with a penetrating study of character. Krohg left Berlin in early 1879 and in the summer of that year made his first visit to the artists' colony at the Danish fishing village of Skagen. There he turned his realist interests to recording the daily life of the local community of fishermen and their wives. He also experimented with new formal arrangements, notably abrupt cropping and the introduction of sudden spatial juxtapositions. In The Net-menders (1879; Oslo, N.G.) he refused to romanticize his subjects, recording their ungainly appearance, their mundane occupations and the spiritual and cultural bleakness of their lives. He responded, however, to the more dramatic sides of Skagen fishermen's lives in Port a Bit! (1879; Oslo, N.G.), a snapshot-like record of a moment during a fishing trip in very rough weather, in which a pilot is seen shouting orders to the crew of a steeply keeling ship. During the 1880s Krohg developed his treatment of both rural and urban life by bringing insights acquired in one setting to an understanding of the other. The boldly unsentimental presentation of the people of Skagen finds a counterpart in the viewer's almost shocking confrontation with the Sick Girl (1881; Oslo, N.G.), which concentrates all attention on the single pathetic figure wrapped in a blanket and achieves a painful intensity of feeling that contemporary critics found distasteful. Further emphasis on the individual figure is to be seen in Krohg's portrait of the Swedish artist Karl Nordström (1882; Oslo, N.G.), painted while both were working at the artists' colony at Grez-sur-Loing and prompted by a picture of similar composition shown by Gustave Caillebotte at the Impressionist Exhibition of 1882 in Paris. As he had done before, Krohg contrasted the figure sharply against a distant backgroundhere the garden and landscape beyond, seen through a window. However, this portrait is distinct from his earlier work in its sensitive use of colour. This was an aspect of painting in Paris that Krohg had especially noticed during his stay there from October 1881, and its impact on his subsequent work is seen in the use of colour in further pictures painted at Skagen. In Sleeping Mother (1883; Bergen, Meyers Saml.), the richness of the warm reds and yellows almost compromises Krohg's emphasis on the squalor of the scene. The anecdotal strain, never quite eradicated from Krohg's critical and realistic approach, came to the fore in a series of pictures on a theme he eventually also treated in the form of a novel, Albertine (Christiania, 1886), the story of a seamstress forced into prostitution through social and economic pressures. The subject reflected the very grave problems faced by the overworked poor in Christianiaindeed in most big cities at this timewhere the forces of law and order often colluded with those of corruption, rather than protecting the weak. Krohg traced the fate of Albertine in several scenes, starting in 1880 with Daybreak (Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst), which shows the exhausted seamstress asleep at her sewing machine, having still not finished the work from the night before. The final scene, Albertine in the Police Doctor's Waiting Room (1887; Oslo, N.G.; see Oslo, fig. 2), was painted after Krohg's novel had been published and banned. Although the painting caused an uproar when first publicly exhibited in Christiania, its shocking subject-matter is not matched by boldness in formal terms. Krohg fell back on several rather artificial devices associated with genre painting, for example the deflection of immediate focus on to subsidiary characters such as the prostitute in the foreground. Krohg's genuine compassion for the plight of the prostitutes in Christiania and his interest in their often complex and contradictory personalities is suggested in some of the studies he made in preparation for the waiting-room scene, such as the portrait Jossa (1886; Oslo, N.G.). The final, full-scale work, however, panders to the vulgar, voyeuristic strain in his secure, wealthy public. Another example of social criticism from this period, in which content and form are better reconciled, is the Struggle for Life (18889; Oslo, N.G.), in which a crowd of impoverished women and children is seen queuing for stale bread given away by a baker's shop on a bleak winter's day. The composition exploits the contrast of the foreground group against the bleak, snow-bound city street receding directly into the picture, just as it compares their pitiful struggle to the cruel indifference of the few individual passers-by. A reflection of the international bohemian life lived by Krohg himself is to be seen in some of his portraits from this time. His portrait of Gerhard Munthe (1885; Oslo, N.G.; see fig.) is typical of these in showing Krohg's fellow Norwegian painter in a characteristic setting, here a Copenhagen café that both artists frequented. The dominating foreground figure familiar from Krohg's earlier work is emphasized by the extensive use of black for the overcoat, which suggests the influence of Edouard Manet, in contrast to the rich blur of grey and gold in the background. In 1890 Krohg embarked on a period of continuous journalism and teaching: from 1890 to 1900 he was a regular contributor to the Christiania newspaper Verdens gang, and from 1910 to 1916 he wrote for Tidens tegn. His lively interviews, essays on art and artists, and concise and witty description of travels illustrated with his own drawings are observant, but on the whole far more positive than balanced criticism. From 1902 to 1909 Krohg taught in Paris at the Académie Colarossi, and in 1909, on his return to Christiania, he became Director (and a professor) at the newly founded Kunstakademi. Krohg's portraits of the 1890s preserve the style established during the previous decade, as in the elegant Sigurd Bodtker (1890s; Oslo, N.G.), who is shown seated at one end of an ornate sofa. Krohg's many self-portraits from this time onwards often show the painter at his easel or looking out of a window and are very painterly in execution, revealing in particular an enhanced response to colour values. Related changes are to be seen in later pictures from Skagen. The Seal Bank (c. 1897; Göteborg, Kstmus.), perhaps his finest sea painting, shows the return of a more aesthetic approach and an eye for the use of shades of blue and green. Also significant among Krohg's later works are his lively paintings of nudes, often seen in unguarded moments, as in the girl looking in a mirror in Toilette (1912; Oslo, N.G.). (Grove Art Online accessed 2007-10-19)
Work Style Period:
Realist (modern European fine arts styles)
work_styleperiod
Realist (modern European fine arts styles)
Work Style Period
false
Work Style Period:
20th century
work_styleperiod
20th century
Work Style Period
false
Work Subject:
women (female humans)
subject
women (female humans)
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
nudes (representations)
subject
nudes (representations)
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
elderly
subject
elderly
Work Subject
false
Work Worktype:
paintings (visual works)
work_type
paintings (visual works)
Work Worktype
false
Work Category (VRC classification):
paintings
work_category__ucbaahvrc_classification_
paintings
Work Category (VRC classification)
false
Work Material and Technique (display):
paint
Work Measurements (display):
81 cm (H) x 54 cm (W)
Work Inscription (display):
signed
Work Location (Repository or Site) name:
Bergen kunstmuseum
Work Location (Repository or Site) role:
repository
Work Location (Geographic) name:
Bergen, Norway
Image Rights (display):
© Ronald Wiedenhoeft. Licensed for educational use via Scholars Resource: Saskia, Ltd.
Image Rights license agreement:
SASKIA, LTD.: WHO CAN USE THIS SOFTWARE: (a) Licensee, including faculty, staff and currently enrolled students may use the Licensed Software to display and or print the corresponding graphic images without limitation for teaching and research purposes at the defined Sites, or at remote locations having electronic access to your Site(s). (b) This license include permission to use the Licensed Software on a multi-user network at the defined Site, and to permit remote access to a computer/server located at your Site. Simultaneous display in multiple locations at or connected to the Site is also permitted. (c) Licensee agrees to employ reasonable security measures designed to limit access to your faculty, staff and currently enrolled students. PROHIBITED USES AND LIMITATIONS: (a) Saskia hereby reserves all rights not expressly granted herein. (b) the License Software may not be used for preparaiton of any publication, scholarly or otherwise; or for any purpose other than teaching or research. Publication of an image from the Licensed Software requires a separate license from Saskia. (c) Licensee agrees not to resell, lease, transfer, sub-license or otherwise distribute a copy of the Licensed Software, or any image taken from the Licensed Software, in whole or in part. (d) Licensee also agrees not to modify, corrupt or alter any digital image graphic content or "digital watermark" or the like in the software provided by Saskia under this Agreement. (e) Licensee agrees not to remove, alter, cover or distort Saskia's copyright notice, trademark, or other proprietary rights notice placed by Saskia in the Licensed Software itself, or in the associated packaging, media or documentation. (f) And Licensee agrees to notify users of the Licensed Software, in writing or by sign-on screen display, of their obligations under this Agreement and solicit their cooperation and compliance with such obligations.
Work Rights (display):
public domain
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Holding Institution:
University of Colorado at Boulder
Collection:
Art and Art History Visual Resources Center
Collection info and contact:
For information about this collection, see