The Net Mender (Garnbinderen)

The Artist: Christian Krohg was a key figure of Nordic art in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. He renounced the moralizing sentimentalism hitherto associated with scenes of daily life in favor of a more objective, socially conscious approach to such subjects. This was in keeping with a strain of naturalism in art and literature that persisted alongside the waves of innovations that were taking place in the arts at the same time—for example, in Impressionism and Symbolism.

Krohg first studied art in Christiania (now Oslo) while preparing for a career in law. After receiving his degree, however, he continued his art studies in Karlsruhe, first with the Norwegian painter Hans Gude (1825–1903) and then with Karl Gussow (1843–1907), whom he followed in 1875 to Berlin. There, he developed a close friendship with German artist Max Klinger (1857–1920) and came under the influence of Danish philosopher Georg Brandes (1842–1927), who introduced him to the writings of Emile Zola and raised his awareness of social and political issues. During the same period he also advanced as a portraitist.

In the spring of 1879, Krohg left the German capital for Kristiania (as it was then spelled), but the experience of Berlin, which was then an unusual destination for an aspiring Norwegian artist, imparted an enduring note of gravitas to Krohg’s work. The following summer Krohg accompanied his Norwegian compatriot Frits Thaulow (1847–1906) to Skagen, a fishing village on the coast of Jutland in Denmark where an influential artists’ colony had grown over the prior decade. Inspired by Barbizon and Impressionist painters in France, Scandinavian painters convened at Skagen to develop their skills in an informal country setting. There they experienced a freedom to experiment and innovate denied them at the arts academies where they received formal training. In Skagen, Krohg was able to channel his social consciousness into paintings of local inhabitants.[1]

Summer 1879—The Painting: That is the context for the present work, which depicts a man and woman seated in a domestic interior. He is engaged in the mending of fishing nets; she is occupied in the related task of winding string. The models were the Skagen fisherman Niels Christian Gaihede (1816–1890) and his wife Ane Gaihede (1812–1904). They posed in their home, surrounded by worn, spartan furnishings. On the rear wall is a pendulum clock and a colored print or watercolor of a sailing ship as well as popular prints and a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (1495–98, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan).

The picture’s variably textured surface reflects a certain painterly exuberance. Krohg modified his handling of the brush in different areas of the picture, adapting it to specific motifs. To convey the roughly plastered surface of the rear wall, for example, he applied paint in varying thickness. The orange and white checkered pattern of Ane Gaihede’s gingham skirt, by contrast, is painted with a marvelous delicacy, to which the observer’s eye is directed by the hanging squares of white string on which Niels Christian Gaihede is working. The seemingly incidental geometry of details like these is echoed throughout the composition, by the rectangular images on the wall, the outlines in the animal prints, and the creases visible in some of those sheets. It is revealed as well in the perspective employed by Leonardo in The Last Supper, as repeated, however subtly, in the form of the clock. Might this instrument for marking time have been intended as a vehicle for linking past, present, and future in art and life? Since the time is set to five minutes to eleven—it is undoubtedly morning—one infers that much of the day’s work remains to be done. Together, the picture’s deliberate structure and the figures’ self-absorption provide a sense of the way in which the day will unfold.

Fall 1879–First Exhibition: Krohg achieved heightened illusionism with regard to surface appearances in this painting, but his representation of space is somewhat condensed. Art critics saw both qualities as idiosyncratic to a fault when Krohg exhibited the work for the first time in the fall of 1879, at the Kunstforeningen in Kristiania.[2] The critic for the daily Aftenbladet, identified only by the initial C, wrote that Krohg showed promise but that he had a lot to learn, while the anonymous critic for the daily Dagbladet criticized Krohg’s use of perspective and the spatial relationship between the figures. Another critic Andreas Aubert also criticized the perceived distance between the figures, but suggested that this could be explained through the artist’s use of a camera lucida to render the composition. (See Aubert 1880.)

It is very likely as the result of reflecting on this criticism that Krohg painted a second version, a more austere variant (see fig. 1 above).[3] Some details have been changed; the print of the ship is omitted, for example. The time on the clock is now a few minutes past five, perhaps justifying the restrained palette. In the second version, there is less disparity in size between the two figures, both of Ane Gaihede’s hands are shown, and Niels Christian Gaihede’s pose is more compact. What is sacrificed in the second version is the present work’s virtuosic range of painting techniques and its vibrant color.

Legacy: It is not known when The Met's picture was acquired by its first known owner, industrialist Rasmus Meyer (1858–1916), who, after 1905, was the foremost collector of contemporary and earlier nineteenth-century Norwegian art. Meyer’s exceptional holdings, by artists ranging from Johan Christian Dahl to Edvard Munch, today form the basis of the historical collections of the KODE Art Museums in Bergen. The painting was inherited by Meyer’s daughter and son-in-law before passing through a series of private collections in the mid-twentieth century, re-emerging in the literature in a notable context.

In 1979, scholar Kirk Varnedoe saw in Krohg’s 1879 Skagen pictures, including the present work—whose location was then generally unknown—the roots of Munch’s pictorial language. (Munch began to study painting with Krohg in 1881.) He argued that, regardless of Krohg’s intentions or the process by which he realized them, the space in this work and others may be read as "strongly expressive rather than merely objective, intensifying the feeling of participatory immediacy and intimacy, by the deformations of scale as well as by the dramatic croppings of the compositions, unlike anything seen in Norway previously." This, Varnedoe argued, saw echoes in works produced by Munch in his maturity, including the drawings Death in the Sick Room and By the Death Bed (1892 and 1896 respectively, both Munchmuseet, Oslo). He selected the Oslo version to open the groundbreaking exhibition Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavian Painting, 1880–1910, held at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, and elsewhere in 1982–83.


Related Works: In addition to the versions at The Met and the National Gallery, Oslo, there is a painting, a variant of the composition, showing only Niels Christian Gaihede and datable to 1880, which measures 51 9/16 x 49 3/16 inches (131 x 125 cm), at Tyssedal Hotel, Tyssedal, Norway (fig. 2). There also is an 1879 pen and ink drawing on paper measuring 5 7/8 x 5 7/8 in. (14.9 x 14.9 cm) in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (fig. 3), which is either a preparatory study or a variant composition. In and about 1917, Krohg painted self-portraits in which he depicted himself at the easel in his studio, with variants of The Net Mender composition appearing as a painting-within-a-painting in the backgrounds; see, for example, Thue 1997, nos. 360 and 362.

Asher Miller 2020

[1] For basic biographical information on Krohg in English, see the entry by Leif Østby and Ingeborg Wikborg in The Dictionary of Art [https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T048037].
[2] Krohg exhibited one other painting Bagbord litt! (1879, National Museum, Oslo), whose title has been translated variously, but which may best be understood in English to mean "A Bit to Port!".
[3] This second version was given to the National Museum by Danish painter Michael Ancher (1849–1927) in 1907. He and his wife, Anna Anker (1859–1935), were central figures of the Skagen school.

Inscription: Signed (lower right): C Krohg

Rasmus Meyer, Bergen; his daughter and son-in-law, Gerda and Otto Nyquist; [GE Auction, April 18, 1932]; Bengt Almgren; Søren L. Christensen (in 1965); Christen Sveaas, Oslo (May 1995–2020)

Kristiania [Oslo]. Kristiania Kunstforening. October 4–?, 1879, no. ? (as "Notbinder fra Skagen") [per donor's records and Thue 1965].

Modum. Stiftelsen Modums Blaafarvevaerk. "Christian Krohg, 1852–1925," May 8–September 30, 1993, no. 7 (as "Garnbinderen," lent by a private collection).

Jevnaker. Kistefos-Museet. "Sosial Nød, Arbeiderkamp, Kristen Forsoning, Norsk Malerkunst gjennom 100 år," August 29–September 26, 1999, no. 7.

Skagen. Skagens Museum. "Christian Krohg og Skagen," March 18–June 6, 2004, no. 3 (as "Garnbinderen," lent by a private collection).

Lillehammer Kunstmuseum. "Christian Krohg og Skagen," June 19–September 12, 2004, no. 3 (as "Garnbinderen," lent by a private collection).

Jevnaker. Kistefos-Museet. "Bak Vinduet—Norske Interiører fra Tidemand til Tandberg," May 13–September 23, 2007, no. 27.

Oslo. Nasjonalgalleriet. "Christian Krohg: Bilder som Griper / Pictures that Captivate," June 15–September 15, 2012, no. 7 (as "Garnbinderen I/Mending the Net I," lent by a private collection).

Copenhagen. Kunstforeningen GL Strand. "Christian Krohg: Tiden omkring Kristiania-Bohemen," February 8–June 1, 2014, no. 21.

C. Aftenbladet (October 24, 1879) [quoted in Thue 1997, pp. 309–10 n. 71], reviews Kristiania 1879.

Dagbladet (February 20, 1880), unpaginated, reviews Kristiania 1879.

A[ndreas Auber]—t. "Fra Kunstforeningen." Morgenbladet no. 292A (October 22, 1880), p. 1, mentions that the wife is seen in another painting by Krohg cutting bread; notes that the artist used a camera lucida for the perspective.

Karl Madsen. Skagens Malere og Skagens Museum. Copenhagen, 1929, ill. p. 88, calls it "Niels og Ane Gaihede" and erroneously identifies it as in the Nationalgalleriet, Oslo.

Pola Gauguin. Christian Krohg. Oslo, 1932, pp. 71–72, describes Andreas Aubert's (1880) reaction to the painting.

Oscar Thue. "Christian Krohg-studier, I, Tegninger av Chr. Krohg i Hamburger Kunsthalle." Kunst og Kultur 48 (1965), pp. 194–95, ill., locates it in the Søren L. Christensen collection.

Kirk Varnedoe. "Christian Krohg and Edvard Munch." Arts Magazine 53 (April 1979), pp. 88–89, mentions it as among the paintings the artist exhibited in 1879, but reproduces the later version in the National Gallery, Oslo.

Alison de Lima Greene and Oscar Thue in Kirk Varnedoe. Northern Light: Realism and Symbolism in Scandinavian Painting, 1880–1910. Exh. cat., Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington. Brooklyn, 1982, p. 162, under no. 51, call its location unknown; note that the sitters modeled for many Skagen painters and that Krohg followed fellow painter Fritz Thaulow in using a camera lucida for his paintings that summer; state that the artist completed this version in Skagen and the second (Oslo) version in Christiania; recount criticism of the picture from its inclusion in Kristiania 1879 as having been overly crowded and that the artist attempted to address this criticism in his second version.

Ingeborg Wikborg. Christian Krohg. Exh. cat., Nasjonalgalleriet. Oslo, 1987, pp. 72, 74–75, ill.

Kjell Rasmus Steinsvik, Øystein Naper, and Knut Ljøgodt. Christian Krohg, 1852–1925. Exh. cat., Stiftelsen Modums Blaafarvevaerk. Modum, 1993, pp. 16, 124, no. 7.

Oscar Thue. Christian Krohg. Ed. Knut Berg. [Oslo], 1997, pp. 46, 48, 323, no. 16, ill. p. 46 (color), call it "Garnbinderen I" and locate it in a private collection.

Fredrikke Schrumpf in Sosial Nød, Arbeiderkamp, Kristen Forsoning, Norsk Malerkunst Gjennom 100 Ǻr. Ed. Haakon Mehren. Exh. cat., Kistefos-Museet. Jevnaker, 1999, pp. 74, 124, no. 7, ill. p. 91 (color).

Annette Johansen and Erik Mørstad in Christian Krohg og Skagen. Exh. cat., Skagens Museum. Skagen, 2004, pp. 10, 17, no. 3, ill. p. 67 (color).

Arnt Normann Fredheim et al. Bak Vinduet—Norske Interiører fra Tidemand til Tandberg. Exh. cat., Kistefos-Museet. Jevnaker, 2007, no. 27.

Vibeke Waallann Hansen. Christian Krohg: Bilder som Griper / Pictures that Captivate. Exh. cat., Nasjonalgalleriet. Oslo, 2012, pp. 158–59, 232, no. 7, ill. p. 24 (color).

Lise Harbeck in Christian Krohg: Tiden omkring Kristiania-Bohemen. Ed. Anne Kielgast and Lise Harbeck. Exh. cat., Kunstforeningen GL Strand. Copenhagen, 2014, pp. 102, 105, no. 21, ill. p. 31 (color).

Gifts of Art: The Met's 150th Anniversary. New York, 2020, p. 195.

Alexandre Lafore. "Un chef-d'œuvre du réalisme nordique offert au Metropolitan Museum." Tribune de l'art (September 7, 2020), fig. 1 (color) [https://www.latribunedelart.com/un-chef-d-oeuvre-du-realisme-nordique-offert-au-metropolitan-museum], as "Le Ramendeur"; discusses at length the picture, its provenance, related paintings, and its acquisition by The Met.