The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (257 page)

(1815–72).
Dutch-born Canadian painter. He studied in Düsseldorf, went to New York
c.
1837, and a few years later moved to Canada, where he worked mainly in Montreal and Quebec. His pictures of the Indians, French-Canadian life, and the landscape, done in a colourful, detailed, and often anecdotal style, proved highly popular, and he has been much imitated and forged.

 
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(1852–1925).
Norwegian painter. He trained in Germany and worked in Paris 1881–2, and inspired by the ideas of
Realism
he took his subjects mainly from ordinary life—often from its sombre or unsavoury aspects. Particularly well known are his paintings of prostitutes, and he wrote a novel,
Albertine
(1886), on the same subject. From 1902 to 1909 he taught in Paris and from 1909 until his death he was Director of the Academy in Oslo. Krøhg's vigorous and straightforward style made him one of the leading figures in the movement from
Romanticism
to
naturalism
that characterized Norwegian art of his period. His son
Per Krøhg
(1889–1965) grew up and was trained in Paris, where he developed in contact with contemporary French artistic trends.
Cubism
, in particular, served him as a vehicle for his rich and fantastic imagination. He was best known as a muralist, decorating many public buildings, particularly in Oslo.

 
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(1851–1909).
Danish painter, Norwegian by birth. He studied in Paris and was a significant figure in introducing
Impressionism
to Denmark. He used a broad technique and was particularly interested in capturing complex effects of light—the fusion of daylight and lamplight, for example. From 1882 he was an influential leader of a colony of Scandinavian artists at the seaside village of Skagen; his work is well represented in the museum there. He ceased painting after he became mentally ill in 1900.

 
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(1877–1959).
Austrian graphic artist, painter, and writer. From 1906 he lived mainly at Zwickledt in Upper Austria, although he travelled a good deal. He was a friend of
Kandinsky
and showed his work in the second
Blaue Reiter
exhibition in 1912, but his preoccupations were very different to those usually associated with the group. His work shows a taste for the morbid and fantastic, which he combined with pessimistic social satire and allegory. Often he depicted weird creatures in the kind of murky nightmare world associated with Odilon
Redon
, whom he met in 1905. Kubin's imagery reflects his disturbed and traumatic life (he had an unhappy childhood, attempted suicide on his mother's grave in 1896, and in 1903 underwent a mental breakdown after the death of his fiancée). He was obsessed with the theme of death (he is said to have liked to watch corpses being recovered from the river) and with the idea of female sexuality as a symbol of death. In 1909 he wrote a Kafkaesque novel
Die andere Seite
(The Other Side) and he illustrated many books, often ones whose subject-matter matched his own macabre interests, such as the stories of Edgar Allan Poe . From the 1920s his reputation was widespread and he was influential on the
Surrealists
. His spidery style changed little throughout his career.

 
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Kunsthistorisches Museum
, Vienna.

Museum of painting, sculpture, and decorative arts (the title means ‘Museum of Art History’) based on the accumulation of treasures by members of the Hapsburg dynasty from the 16th century onwards and first opened to the public in 1781. The Gemäldegalerie (picture gallery) has a world-famous collection of paintings, particularly rich in works by the great Venetian masters (
Giorgione
,
Titian
,
Tintoretto
,
Veronese
),
Rubens
, and Pieter
Bruegel the Elder
.

 
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