Portrait of the Painter Gerhard Munthe

Christian Krohg's 1885 portrait of Gerhard Munthe — a Norwegian painter and designer who would become one of the pioneers of Norwegian national Romanticism — documents the close community of Norwegian artists in Christiania in the mid-1880s. Munthe, who would later create an influential body of decorative work drawing on Norwegian folk art and mythology, was at this point still primarily a naturalist painter. Krohg's portrait captures him at the beginning of a career that would take a distinctly different direction from Krohg's own social realist commitments.

Krohg renders Munthe with his habitual directness — a frank, unidealized observation of his colleague's physical presence. The handling is confident and somewhat summary, with the face given careful attention and the background broadly painted. The composition follows the conventional three-quarter portrait format used for informal artistic community portraits.