KunstenaarNorwegian
Frits Thaulow
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Stand before a Frits Thaulow painting and you will feel the pull of water. Rivers slide beneath old stone bridges, streams catch the last copper light of afternoon, snow-melt rushes over mossy rocks with an almost audible clarity. No painter of the late nineteenth century captured the movement and reflective surface of flowing water with such quiet authority. Thaulow's rivers are simultaneously translucent and mirror-like, revealing the riverbed below while holding the sky and trees above in shimmering suspension.
Born in Christiania (now Oslo) on 20 October 1847 into a prosperous family, his father was a pharmacist, his brother-in-law would be Edvard Munch's father, Thaulow initially studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen from 1870 to 1872, then spent two years under the Norwegian landscape master Hans Fredrik Gude at the Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe. A formative trip to Paris in the early 1870s exposed him to plein-air painting, which became the guiding principle of his work for the rest of his life. In 1879 he travelled to Skagen, the remote Danish fishing village that was drawing a circle of Scandinavian artists, where he painted alongside Christian Krohg.
Back in Norway, Thaulow became one of the central figures of the progressive art scene in the 1880s. Together with Krohg and Erik Werenskiold, he helped establish the Hostutstillingen (Autumn Exhibition) in 1882, Norway's first independent art exhibition. Many of his finest Norwegian works depict Asgardstrand, the small coastal town south of Oslo that became an artists' colony. His canvas Gammelt herresete pa Grunerloekken (1882) captures an old manor house with the soft atmospheric naturalism that would define his early career.
In 1892, Thaulow moved permanently to France, where his art found its fullest expression. He settled not in Paris but in small towns, Montreuil-sur-Mer, Dieppe, Quimperle in Brittany, Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, where provincial rivers and canals offered the motifs he loved. He was close friends with Claude Monet and in 1895 convinced the great Impressionist to travel with him to Norway to paint snow scenes, a visit that produced some of Monet's most distinctive winter landscapes. Thaulow walked the line between realism and Impressionism: his plein-air approach and luminous palette were Impressionist, but his descriptive precision and commitment to the specific character of each waterway placed him closer to naturalism.
Thaulow received extraordinary honours during his lifetime. He was appointed Commander of the 2nd Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav in 1905, received the French Legion of Honour, the Italian Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, and the Tunisian Order of Nichan Iftikhar. His work is held by the National Gallery of Norway (37 paintings), the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He died on 5 November 1906 in Volendam, the Netherlands, at fifty-nine.
On the Nordic auction market, Thaulow commands strong prices befitting his stature in Scandinavian art history. On Auctionist, 300 lots have been recorded, almost entirely through Grev Wedels Plass Auksjoner in Oslo, which serves as the primary market for his paintings. His auction record on the platform stands at NOK 2,800,000 for Gammelt herresete pa Grunerloekken (1882), with several other major canvases achieving six-figure NOK results. Interior scenes and Norwegian landscapes tend to command the highest prices, while his French river subjects represent the breadth of his later career.