FRITS THAULOW PAINTINGS FOR SALE & BIOGRAPHY

FRITS THAULOW

Norwegian, 1847-1906

BIOGRAPHY
Born in Oslo, Frits Thaulow's “desire to become an artist was manifested early on,” writes Vidar Poulsson in his introduction to the catalogue for the major Thaulow exhibition held at Hirschl & Adler Galleries in New York in 1985, “but family and social pressures delayed its expression… Initially Thaulow considered a career as a marine painter, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, which fostered a long-standing tradition in this field. He also spent two winters studying with the Norwegian landscape/marine painter Hans-Fredrik Gude (1825-1903) in Karlsruhe, Germany. However, realizing the limitations of such a specialized field, and in all likelihood advised by Gude, Thaulow chose ultimately to concentrate on landscape painting.

“In the 1870s, before sojourns in Paris had become fashionable among Norwegian artists, Thaulow stayed in this city for long periods of time… Thaulow was a brother-in-law of Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), who painted impressionistically at this time. Thaulow himself, however, did not immediately assimilate Impressionism, and instead emulated the more academic work of Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884), and other French Realist painters. Some of the first paintings Thaulow exhibited at the Paris Salon between 1877 and 1880 were his early marine pictures, but these brought him little recognition.

“By the late 1870s, Norwegian art had reached a crossroads. The influence of the German Romantic school of painting was still strong, but the impact of French plein-air painting coupled with its extended chromatic palette was affecting greater num-bers of students. In this respect, the unofficial leader of the German school, Thaulow's former teacher Hans-Fredrik Gude, then a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts at Karlsruhe, had begun to assimilate "modern" ideas and was an inspiration to his students. A new generation of painters — Thaulow and his close circle of friends, which included Christian Krogh, Gerhard Munthe, Erik Werenskiold and Eilif Peterssen —were often well educated and from families of the Civil Service, the backbone of the Norwegian state…

“During the early 1880s, many Norwegian painters returned home after having studied abroad. This decade was a period of cultural growth, and, for Thaulow, his return to Oslo signaled greater public recognition and a serious commitment to landscape painting. He was hailed by critics as Oslo's foremost painter, and his pictures of the palace garden, the main street (Karl Johansgate), the modest East end, the harbor, and the gentle hills of the environs came to epitomize the distinctive character of the capital city. Equally significant were pictures he executed during his winter stay at Kragerø ( 1881-82), a sojourn at Modum (1883), and his trips to Scotland (1884) and Venice (1885), which, as a body of work, combined elements of French academic realism with chromatic Impressionism…

“Between 1888 and 1892, Thaulow painted throughout Norway. He was also elected to the international fine arts jury of the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1889. His own paintings of winter scenes were favorably received at this exhibition, and one was purchased by the French Government. In addition, in 1891, he became Chairman of the Norwegian Students' Association. A year later, Thaulow, friends and colleagues — Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898), Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891), Alfred Roll (1846-1919), Carolus-Duran (1837-1917), and Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861-1942) — founded the Salon du Champ de Mars (which later became the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts) as a reaction against the conservative policies and attitudes of the traditional Salon...

“In Paris, Thaulow showed his work in numerous group exhibitions. Of particular interest was the show held in 1899 at Georges Petit & Cie. in which his work appeared along with the work of Paul Albert Besnard (1849-1934), Jean-Charles Cazin (1841-1901), Alfred Sisley (1839-1899), and Claude Monet (1840-1926)… A personal friend of Monet's, Thaulow had earlier arranged, in 1895, for the French artist to come to Norway, where they both painted winter landscapes. Throughout his career, Thaulow continuously strove to keep abreast of new stylistic developments and technical innovations. While he never liberated color to the same degree as Monet, he studied the work of the Impressionists and found his own stylistic variant. In this respect, his work has more in common with Camille Pissarro and Alfred Sisley, who always maintained the integrity of form in their work.

“At the time of Thaulow's death in Holland in 1906, he was fifty-nine and had been suffering from diabetes for many years. In spite of his degenerative condition, however, the last years of his life were fruitful and productive. He had been working towards a major retrospective of his work in Paris, in addition to writing an article on the relationship between art and literature. He always remained faithful to his own vision and temperament, and for this reason his work is distinctive and poetically honest.”

[Vidar Poulsson, Frits Thaulow (exhibition catalogue), Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, 1985, pp. 11-12]

Museum Collections
Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Finnish, National Gallery, Helsinki
Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, MA
Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen
National Museum, Oslo
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI
Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD