Hugo Wetlesen

Christian Krohg's 1920 portrait of Hugo Wetlesen belongs to the final active decade of a long career that had begun in the 1870s. By 1920 Krohg was in his late sixties, a grand figure of Norwegian art who had spent four decades documenting the society around him. His late portraits retain the characteristic directness of observation developed in his naturalist years, though the brushwork has typically broadened and loosened with age. Wetlesen was a Norwegian public figure, and the commission belongs to the genre of late-career official or semi-official portraiture that occupied many aging painters who had made their reputations in more polemical contexts. The work demonstrates that Krohg's engagement with the people of his time — a project that began with the urban poor in the 1880s — continued into the 1920s at a more leisurely pace.

Oil on canvas in Krohg's broad late manner. The paint handling is confident and summary rather than labored — decades of portrait practice have distilled his approach to essentials. The face receives the most concentrated attention, with clothing and background treated in broad, efficient strokes that describe without overworking.