Frits Thaulow

Frits Thaulow was a Norwegian landscape painter and a leading figure in naturalistic painting in the 1880s. He became a renowned painter in Europe from 1889 and settled in France in 1892. Thaulow's sensitivity to color and poetry made his naturalism meaningful to colleagues, critics and audiences for two generations. Thaulow was born in Christiania and grew up in a liberal home with a wealthy apothecary father. He had a talent for friendship and a capacity for initiative.

He fulfilled his father's wish to study pharmacy before breaking through as a painter around 1880. Thaulow was tutored by CF Sørensen, the foremost Danish master of marine painting, and Hans F. Gude, the most important Norwegian marine painter, before spending three winters in Paris and familiarized himself with recent trends in French art. He became enthusiastic about Jules Bastien-Lepage, who was admired at the time as the leader of the young "realists". In the early 1880s, Thaulow's art was linked to the city itself and its surroundings, but with detours to Kragerø, Paris, Copenhagen, Scotland and Venice until 1885.

From 1885, winter entered his pictures. Thaulow's efforts in the 1880s were of fundamental importance for the entire Norwegian "naturalist" school of painting. He gave it a refined touch of intimacy and color beauty that inspired, and he had an open eye for talent around him. Thaulow did not want to advocate art doctrines and never claimed that "everything can be painted, as long as it is well painted" or the like. He never became an impressionist, although he experimented with the direction during a stay in Paris in 1882-1883. Thaulow moved to France in 1892, but was often at home on painting stays. He died in 1906.