Christian Krohg (13 August 1852 – 16 October 1925) was a Norwegian naturalist painter, illustrator, author and journalist.

Life and career

Krohg was the son of lawyer and statesman Georg Anton Krohg (1817–1873) and the grandson of Christian Krohg (1777–1828) who was a government minister. Krohg studied law at the University of Oslo (then Christiania) (1869–73) and was educated in Germany at the Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe under Hans Gude, and later worked in Paris from 1881 to 1882.

Inspired by the ideas of the realists he chose motives primarily from everyday life – often its darker or socially inferior sides. Particularly well known are his pictures of prostitutes. Prostitution is also the subject of his novel Albertine (1886), which caused a scandal when first published, and was confiscated by the police. Krohg’s style made him a leading figure in the transition from romanticism to naturalism, characteristic of Norwegian art in this period. Through his periodic residence at Skagen, where he arrived for the first time in 1879, he had great influence on Anna and Michael Ancher, and provided early support to Edvard Munch.

Krohg was the founding editor of the Bohemian journal, Impressionisten, in 1886. He then became a journalist for the Oslo newspaper Verdens Gang (from 1890 to 1910), where he wrote remarkable portrait interviews. Later he became a professor director at the The Norwegian Academy of Arts (Statens Kunstakademi) 1909-1925.

He was married to artist Oda Krohg and was the father of muralist Per Lasson Krohg. There are notable paintings by Christian Krohg in the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo and at Skagens Museum in Denmark.