ArtistNorwegianb.1919–d.2009
Joronn Sitje
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Between 1928 and 1939, Joronn Sitje lived on a farm in Kenya with her second husband, and the decade she spent there shaped the most distinctive chapter of her career. Working in a climate and light entirely unlike Norway's, she painted the people and landscape of East Africa with thick brushstrokes and saturated color - portraits of Nandi tribe girls, a Kavirondo chief named Apot, vast open savannahs - producing canvases that carry a rawness rarely seen in Norwegian painting of that era.
Sitje was born in Kristiania (now Oslo) on 30 April 1897 to a magistrate family. She enrolled at the Norwegian National Academy of Craft and Art Industry in 1914, studying under Oluf Wold-Torne and Lars Utne, but illness interrupted those studies. She went to Paris, where she entered the orbit of the French Fauvist Othon Friesz and studied anatomy with the Swedish painter Sigfrid Ullman. The Paris years gave her the chromatic confidence that would mark her mature work.
After returning from Kenya following her husband's death in 1942, she settled in Høn in Asker and turned her attention to the domestic and local - portraits, interiors, and the Norwegian landscape. Her daughter Franciska, nicknamed Bitte, appears repeatedly in these later works, lending them an intimacy that contrasts sharply with the scale of the African pictures. She illustrated two books by her husband, "På afrikanske vidder" (1932) and "Farmen ved elven" (1933), showing that her engagement with Africa extended beyond painting.
Her range is unusual within Norwegian art history: Expressionism in the 1920s, a decade of African figuration, and then a quieter Norwegian period. Four of her Kenya paintings entered the collection of the National Museum of Norway, including "Afrikansk kvinnehode" (1930) and "Nandipiker" (1932). She also exhibited at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo.
At auction, Sitje's work appears almost exclusively through Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo, which holds all 35 items in the Auctionist database. Her strongest results include "Ungdom 1934" at 30,000 NOK and "Mother and Son 1935" at 26,000 NOK. The market is concentrated but consistent, with the African-period figuration typically commanding the highest prices.