Christian Skredsvig

Christian Skredsvig was a Norwegian painter and writer born at Modum in Buskerud. He started at Johan Fredrik Eckersberg's painting school when he was only fifteen years old. After school he traveled to Copenhagen and became a pupil of the landscape painter Vilhelm Kyhn from 1870 to 1874. Kyhn also helped him get a free place at the art academy. Skredsvig also lived in Paris for several years, where he was a pupil of Léon Bonnat and Heinrich von Zügel. Based in Paris, he also traveled to Italy, Spain and Corsica. Skredsvig exhibited for the first time at the industrial exhibition in Drammen in 1873, and in 1881 he won the prestigious gold medal at the Salon in Paris for a French farm motif, Ferme à Venoix (1881). This plein air painting was his international breakthrough. His first solo exhibition was in Fritzner's Pavilion in Kristiania in 1886. The mood painting Seljefløyten (1889) is one of his best-known works. Skredsvig's artistic expression went from realism to neo-romanticism, and he was one of the pioneers in the development of plein air painting and mood painting in Norway in the 1880s. He used various techniques, including naturalistic animal and landscape painting, portraiture, religious and folk motifs. Skredsvig was also a popular writer in his time, with publications such as the semi-autobiographical story about the miller's son Even Strand, published from 1912 to 1916. Skredsvig moved back to Norway in 1885 and settled on the farm Fleskum in Bærum, where he painted distinctive Norwegian landscapes and collected inspiration from various art forms and folk traditions.