Fisherman

Fisherman of 1880 belongs to Christian Krohg's early Realist work, when he was in his mid-twenties and developing the social documentary approach that would characterize his most important paintings. Norwegian fishermen were emblematic figures of national identity in the cultural debates of the period, representing an authentic relationship to the land and sea that industrial modernity threatened. The Busch-Reisinger Museum's holding of this work in Cambridge, Massachusetts testifies to the international circulation of Scandinavian Realist painting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Krohg had studied in Germany under Karl Gussow in Berlin and Karlsruhe, absorbing the rigorous Realist approach that he then applied to Norwegian subjects. The fisherman subject connects to the broader Scandinavian naturalist tradition of depicting working-class coastal life, seen also in the paintings of Skagen artists like Skagen and Krøyer.

The fisherman is rendered with the direct observation and tonal solidity of Krohg's German academic training applied to a Norwegian subject. The paint handling is careful and deliberate rather than the looseness of his later work.