Christian Krohg was a Norwegian painter and writer (1852-1925).
He lived in Germany, where he met Max Klinger, and later in Paris, where he formed an active group of bohemian artists.
Very close to William Morris in his artistic and political beliefs, he was always interested in the lifestyle of the lower classes, preferring rural and realistic images for his paintings.
‘Reading at Villa Britannia’ (1907) is a clear example of this: the figure, elegantly immersed in reading, is the protagonist – together with the rural background – of a scene eternally suspended in time.
Krohg’s literary and pictorial choices, always poised between Romanticism and Naturalism, make him one of the most interesting artistic figures at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Manu Writes and Reviews 