Cotters' farms

Gerhard Munthe's Cotters' Farms (1889) depicts the husmannsplass — the smallholdings of the Norwegian cotter class, the poorest agricultural workers who rented land from larger farms and worked for the landowner in exchange. The husmann and his family occupied the lowest rung of Norwegian rural society, their precarious existence a subject of growing social concern in the 1880s as rural depopulation and economic change undermined the old agricultural order. Munthe's depiction of the cotters' farms participates in the Norwegian naturalist tradition of dignifying the poor and marginal.

The cotters' farms as subject presents modest, slightly dilapidated structures in a Norwegian rural setting — the specific visual character of poor farm buildings, their weathered wood and modest proportions contrasting with the larger main farms they served. Munthe renders these structures with observational accuracy — the specific appearance of Norwegian cotter architecture without sentimentalization. His palette is appropriately restrained for the subject's modest character — the weathered greys and brown of unpainted wood, the greens of surrounding farmland.