Frits Thaulow (1847-1906) La Cère, dans le Lot

Oil on canvas signed lower right, 1903
Dimensions: H. 60cm x W. 73cm (with frame: H. 80cm x W. 93cm)

Johan Frederik Thaulow, known as Frits Thaulow, was a Norwegian Impressionist painter, considered one of the pioneers of naturalistic painting. He is famous for his winter scenes and his powerfully realistic depictions of flowing rivers. During his lifetime, his fresh approach won him an international following.

Born in Christiania in 1847, Thaulow trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, before frequent stays in Germany and France. During his first stay in Paris in 1874, he discovered Impressionist painting when he met and befriended Claude Monet. That same year, he married Paul Gauguin's sister-in-law in Norway. Later, Thaulow was also very close to Auguste Rodin, whom he introduced to Scandinavian artists visiting Paris. Frits Thaulow taught Edward Munch at the painting school in Modum, Norway, which he helped found.

Frits Thaulow is one of Europe's great landscape artists. From his many travels, he drew on a variety of techniques and sources of inspiration. Initially, Thaulow was influenced by the French naturalism of Jules Bastien-Lepage and the Barbizon school. After discovering Impressionism in Paris, Thaulow traveled throughout Europe, but it was in France that he spent most of his time. In 1893, his path crossed that of his painter friend Henri Le Sidaner, and the artist's touch became more intimate.
In his paintings, Thaulow remained very attached to the realism of the Nordic schools. But when he painted water, the Impressionist influence was unmistakable. The artist excelled in reproducing views of canals and riverbanks. A great colorist, he left us realistic paintings in which the effect of nature in motion is particularly well rendered. In 1899, Frits Thaulow joined the Société nouvelle de peintres et de sculpteurs, with a first group exhibition at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in March 1904, following a trip to the Dordogne in 1903.

After Frits Thaulow's death, the Georges Petit gallery in Paris, which had represented and sold his work since the painter settled in France, dispersed his studio in 1907. This magnificent artist had appeared in the greatest group exhibitions in Munich, Berlin and Paris, and notably at the Salon des Artistes Français and the Salon du Champ de Mars, where he exhibited from 1890 onwards. A highly influential artist, Thaulow was a member of the jury at the 1889 Universal Exhibition in Paris. The Musée d'Orsay houses a painting of “Le Peintre Thaulow et ses enfants” by Jacques-Émile Blanche (1895).

Honors and awards:
Berlin in 1886, Munich in 1890, Vienna in 1894,
Paris 1900 (Exposition Universelle)
Chevalier then Officier de la Légion d'Honneur
...

Dozens of works by Frits Thaulow in major museums:
Paris (Petit Palais and Musée d'Orsay), Philadelphia, Baltimore, Reims, Saint Petersburg (Hermitage), Ney York (Metropolitan), Oslo, Moscow, Stockholm, Boston, Saint Louis, Goteborg, etc ...

This work by Frits Thaulow delivers the subject for which the artist is world-renowned as “The Master of Rivers and Streams from Norway”. The moving nature that so appealed to the artist is here perfectly composed, with a tree of shifting foliage through which the river water shivers. The scene is in front of the village of Bretenoux in Quercy, on the border of the Lot and Corrèze departments. Thaulow produced this magnificent painting in 1903 during his trip to the Dordogne, just prior to his exhibition at Galerie Georges Petit. The oil on canvas is in perfect, unrestored condition.