The painter and author Christian Skredsvig (1854-1924) grew up in modest circumstances in Geithus in Modum, Buskerud. His drawing talent was discovered at a young age, and at just 15 years old, he was sent to art school in Kristiania with financial support from Dr. Thauwlow at Modum Bad.
Later, he studied in Copenhagen and Munich for over six years until, at the age of only 26, he made his breakthrough in Paris with the painting Sledding by the Seine in 1880. The following year, he became the only Norwegian painter ever to win a gold medal at the prestigious Salon in Paris for the painting Une ferme a Venoix.
Skredsvig married Maggie Plahte and lived in Paris for five years. The couple's only daughter, Daisy, tragically died of pneumonia before she turned two, and the Skredsvigs moved from Paris back to Norway and the farm Fleskum in Bærum in 1885.
In the summer of 1886, the Skredvig couple invited their artist friends to Fleskum to paint and stay at the farm. The summer's paintings, with their evening moods and reflections in the water, are regarded as the beginning of Neo-Romanticism in Norway's art history. Skredsvig painted Midsummer's Eve at Dælivann and began one of his most famous paintings, The Willow Flute.
His marriage to Maggie Plahte ended in divorce and in 1894 Skredsvig moved to Berg farm in Eggedal. Skredsvig knew Berg farm from his previous painting trips to Eggedal with, among others, Harriet Backer, Gerhard Munthe and Swedish Ernst Josephson. In the summer of 1888, Skredsvig painted one of his most beloved paintings, Idyll (the man with the cat) in Eggedal.
From the farmer at Berg, Skredsvig bought the place Hagan, which he developed into his artist's home and small farm. In 1898 he married Beret Berg and together they had four children.
Skredsvig lived in Hagan for the rest of his life, only interrupted by trips to Kristiania and some short stays abroad. Skredsvig mostly painted the nature around Hagan and up in the mountains where he had a cabin. Nature and rural culture inspired him to paint and write novels, as well as his autobiography Days and Nights Among Artists.
With lyrical moods of people and animals in the Norwegian landscape, his paintings have become "icons" from our golden age and his artist's home Hagan is today one of Norway's best-preserved artists' homes.
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