Biographies

Christian Krohg (1852 – 1925) He was born at Aker, near Christiania (Oslo) . While studying law at the University of Christiania (1869–73), he attended both Johan Fredrik Eckersberg’s private art school (1869–70) and then the drawing class of Julius Middelthun at the Royal School of Drawing (1870–71). Having taken his degree in law, he went to the Kunstschule in Karlsruhe, Germany, where he studied under Hans Gude and then Karl Gussow (1843–1907). 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 (1842–1927), who introduced him to contemporary French writers such as Emile Zola and did much to sharpen his awareness of social and political problems. Krohg returned to Norway in 1878 and became a well-known advocate of impressionism. He later taught in Paris and in 1909 became director of the Oslo Academy, where Edvard Munch was one of his students.. In The Struggle for Existence (4 vol., 1920–21) he advocated the social mission of the arts. He was a journalist as well as a painter, and one of his short pieces, a report on a visit of Oscar Wilde to Krohg’s friend, the painter Fritz Thaulow, in Dieppe in 1897, after Wilde was released from prison, was translated and published in , . The New Age (NA 4.7:132)