Toilet

Toilet of 1912, in the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, depicts a woman at her toilette — the private ritual of washing and dressing — a subject that had been central to French Impressionist painting since Degas's series of women bathing. By 1912 Krohg was in his late fifties and had long absorbed the impact of French modernism on Norwegian painting. The toilette subject allowed him to engage with questions of feminine privacy, bodily experience, and the quality of intimate domestic light that occupied many painters of his generation. The figure at her toilette is caught in a private moment, unposed and unselfconscious in a way that formal portraiture would not allow. Krohg's treatment likely shows his mature technique — looser and more atmospheric than his early Realism — brought to bear on a subject demanding sensitivity to light on skin and the textures of domestic space.

The toilette subject requires careful handling of light on the nude or semi-clothed figure in the warm, diffused light of a private interior. Krohg's mature technique is well suited to capturing soft modeling.