Johan Krouthén

Johan Krouthén (2 November 1858 – 19 December 1932) was a Swedish artist. He broke away from the traditions of the Swedish Academy, turning to Realism and Idealism. Immediately after his studies, he spent a few months in Paris and in Denmark where he associated with the Skagen Painters. Back in Sweden he painted pictures of gardens and portraits of local people.

Krouthén, the son of Conrad Krouthén, a merchant, and Hilda Atkins, was born in Linköping. The Krouthén family, from Norrköping, had worked for generations as pewterers.

When he was 14, Krouthén left school and started an apprenticeship with Svante Leonard Rydholm, a photographer and artist, where he learnt the basic skills of both painting and photography. In 1875, at the age 16, he joined the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm where he studied drawing, portrait painting and landscaping. In addition to his education at the Academy, he was also taught by Swedish artist Edvard Perseus who was critical of the Academy and encouraged his students to paint from nature.

Krouthén became acquainted with Oscar Björck and Anders Zorn who also studied at the Art Academy. In the autumn of 1881, when the Academy president, Georg von Rosen, warned Zorn that he was not following the academy's prescribed curriculum, he promptly replied that he would leave. Krouthén, who happened to come into the president's office at the time, also said he would leave.

In 1881, Krouthén spent a short period in Paris, a popular destination for Swedish artists in the 1880s, but he soon returned to Sweden where he painted in Scania and in Bohuslän with its rocky landscapes. His painting of a desolate landscape with a barefoot boy on a dirt track was exhibited in Stockholm in 1883, arousing considerable attention as a result of its realistic, unembellished look.

In the summer of 1883, he joined Oscar Björck at Skagen in the north of Jutland, where there was a small colony of artists from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. He stayed there from May until at least October. The Skagen Painters advocated artistic Naturalism. Instead of groups of weathered fishermen, Krouthén painted landscapes of the flat desolate Grenen beaches.

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