Influential Norwegian Painter Asta Nørregaard’s First Museum Retrospective

Now open at the National Museum in Oslo, “Asta Nørregaard: Truth and Beauty” is the first museum exhibition devoted to the Norwegian painter, whose portraits made her one of the most recognized artists of her day—and yet virtually unknown to many today. Nørregaard built a career as an artist at a time when very few women had such an opportunity. She studied in Christiania, Munich, and Paris, exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1881 and 1882, and later at the Paris World’s Fair in 1889. She also painted leading figures from Norwegian cultural and public life, including Edvard Munch, women’s rights activist Katti Anker Møller, and King Haakon VII.

The exhibition, spanning work from the 1870s to the 1920s, includes those portraits, but it also broadens the view of her work with interiors, landscapes, religious paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and archival material. A large portion comes from private collections and has rarely been shown publicly. Her attention to dress, fabric, and surface once made her a sought-after portraitist, but it also led to her being written off as something frivolous—simply a woman painting fashion scenes. Thankfully, the show reconsiders that part of her work, especially her use of color and the way she rendered clothing within her work. Comparisons to John Singer Sargent would not be unfounded.

One of the key works in the exhibition is In the Studio from 1883, Nørregaard’s first known self-portrait. Shown in her Paris studio while working on the altarpiece for Gjøvik Church, she appears not as a symbol of artistic life, but as a painter in the middle of a serious commission. That focus on professionalism carries through the exhibition, which also looks at her work as a teacher, her support for women artists and musicians, and her connection to women’s rights and public life.