About
A young woman, dressed in white, reclines peacefully against a doorway, with her face turned away from the viewer. She seems lost in the view of the moonlit landscape ahead of her, where a lake lies entirely calm in the dusk; it is summer, and the night sky is blue and the trees are verdant. Above the woman hangs a Japanese lantern, whose high-hanging position against the sky makes it resemble an exotic moon. The lantern is reflected in the door’s shiny casing and pane: resplendent in golden yellow and orange, it creates a warm, atmospheric light in the gloaming.
The picture, drawn in pastel chalk, has a sensitive, lyrical style, and we sense a mood of enigmatic yearning. The dreamy atmosphere is augmented by the blurred contours of the trees and by the mysterious tree trunks that are so curiously slender and upright in the foreground. With this work, Oda Krohg helped introduce neo-romanticism to Norway in the late 1880s. In this movement, artists rejected realism’s more matter-of-fact, impassive depictions of reality in favour of symbolism and romantic themes, such as the luminous summer nights of the north. With its cropping and subdued atmosphere, the picture also shows traces of being inspired by Japanese art, as was often the case in Western paintings at the time.
Along with her husband, the artist Christian Krohg, Oda Krohg was one of the leading lights of the countercultural movement known in the 1880s and 1890s as “the Kristiania bohemians”. She created many innovative and well-known works that have kept their prominent position in Norwegian art history.
- Creation date:
- 1886
- Other titles:
- Japansk lykt (NOR)
- Object type:
- Painting
- Materials and techniques:
- Pastell på lerret
- Material:
- Canvas
- Dimensions:
- Height: 1007 mm
- Width: 675 mm
- Depth: 21 mm
- Keywords:
- Visual art
- Classification:
- 532 - Bildende kunst
- Inventory no.:
- NG.M.00879
- Cataloguing level:
- Single object
- Acquisition:
- Gift from Olaf Schou 1909
- Owner and collection:
- Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design, The Fine Art Collections
- Photo:
- Børre Høstland/Lathion, Jacques
Nasjonalmuseet's collection catalogue is a living resource of information gathered since the 1830's. Some records may contain language or ideas that today could be perceived as outdated, offensive or discriminatory with regard to for instance gender, sexuality, ethnicity or disability, and that may be at odds with the museum's values regarding equality and diversity.
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Other works by Oda Krohg
Portrait of the Artist Aasta HansteenOda Krohg(1903)
Nattfugler. Bokken Lasson og Sten DrewsenOda Krohg(1902)
Portrait of the Author Rota Margrethe VullumOda Krohg(1906) Ant.
Portrait of the Swedish Painter Ivar AroseniusOda KrohgAntakelig 1905
A Newspaper SuscriberOda Krohg1887
Christian Krohg at the EaselOda KrohgMellom 1885 og 1890
BookbindingAlexandra Thaulow, Oda KrohgCa. 1900





























