Christian Krohg's Naturalism by �ystein Sj�stad

Author:�ystein Sj�stad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2018-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

THE WAITING ROOM SPECTACLE

Krohg’s Waiting Room is a stage on which different kinds of prostitutes are made visible: from the young factory girls to the older, more experienced women flaunting their “fancy” dresses—mimicking bourgeois elegance, or creating “a parody of fashionable clothing,”49 to borrow the words of fashion sociologist Diana Crane. Krohg captured the carnivalesque side of prostitution and a hierarchy even among these representatives of the underclass. Krohg’s painting depicts the different types of prostitutes described in Boeck’s reports of the early 1880s. The two older women in the foreground of the painting fit especially well with some of Boeck’s comments from 1881 and 1882:

Gladis, 22 years old, from Bergen, thick and fat, with an animalistic face, with hands, lips, and even eyes shaking from drinking beer and hard liquor; she has had syphilis and one child.…

If one walks into one of the bordellos in the evening, one will see a collection of women one will not soon forget. Their looks, clothing, manners are so different from all others—they form a class unto themselves.… Those living there are repulsive in appearance.…

Most of the girls at the bordello have been at it a long time. One can see them year after year, meeting up twice a week for the doctor’s examination. They get fatter and more amusing, and they look more and more foolish. All the elegance disappears and only the animalistic qualities remain.50

It seems as if Krohg had visualized these descriptions and sought to convey them in his painting.

The more experienced women in Krohg’s large canvas are imitating the chic Parisiennes in their choice of dresses and accessories—their shoes, hats, gloves, and umbrellas. In his novel, Krohg also described nice ladies wearing silk and velvet, as well as large hats from Paris.51 The hat especially was an important indicator of official or aspired-to social status. As art historian Anthea Callen states, “Hats, the crowning glory of a woman’s toilette, epitomized the bourgeois obsession with appearance and the outward display of luxury.”52 Hats had special social meanings, and men and women of all classes wore them with pride. It was inappropriate for women of any class to be seen outside without wearing a hat.53 Toward the end of the nineteenth century, women could also choose among different kinds of hats beyond the traditional bonnet, and only the poorest went bareheaded. In the 1870s and 1880s hats and bonnets became higher and higher, built up with feathers of aigrette and ostrich, and with ribbons of taffeta, satin, or velvet. In Krohg’s large painting, women wear a variety of hats with striking decorations; only Albertine and another poor girl on the right have mere shawls on their heads—typical of working class women. It was the size and color of hats worn by prostitutes that made them stand out, the exaggeration and vulgarization of fashion conveying their low class and crass taste.

The social meaning and importance of the hat is exemplified by paintings of milliners’ shops in the impressionist era, especially the series by Edgar Degas.

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