FRITS THAULOWFrom Evening in Oudenaarde to Summer Evening in Hokksund

With this Frits Thaulow exhibition, classical art made its entrance into Vestfossen. Initially, the purpose of Galleri Star was to serve as a space for solo exhibitions of modern and contemporary artists of international significance. The Thaulow exhibition broke with this sequence.

Taking as its starting point the 1891 painting Sommeraften i Hokksund (Summer Evening in Hokksund), Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium was delighted to be able to present an exhibition of works by Frits Thaulow (1847–1906), one of Norway’s foremost landscape painters of the nineteenth century. The Hokksund painting, showing a local scene, was purchased for its collection by Sparebanken Øst in the autumn of 2018. It is also through a generous donation by Sparebanken that VKL had the opportunity to show a selection of Thaulow paintings.

Sommeraften i Hokksund is a street scene depicting cattle and people moving along Storgata in Hokksund, or Haugsund, as the village was called at the time of Thaulow’s visit in the summer of 1891. According to research undertaken by Eiker Arkiv, it would seem that the artist has allowed himself considerable licence, composing an image from houses he felt suited his purpose, but which were actually at different locations in Hokksund. It is a painting with an interesting history that has been widely described in the literature of Norwegian art. It was also widely exhibited in the first decades after it was painted, including at the annual Autumn Exhibition in Kristiania in 1891, the Paris Salon of 1892, VI Internationale Kunstausstellung in München in 1892, the Norwegian Jubilee Exhibition in 1914 and Kunstnernes hus in Oslo in 1933. Other naturalistic landscape paintings from Thaulow’s hand will also be on show in Galleri Star, all executed in his French-inspired moderate realism with a strong focus on colouration and lighting effects.

Along with Edvard Munch, Frits Thaulow was among the first Norwegians to shine in the international artistic firmament. From the 1880s onwards he enjoyed considerable international success, participating regularly at the Paris Salon and selling well in the USA. In 1892, he was appointed a Knight of the Order of St. Olav, later a Commander, for his ‘auspicious activity as an artist ’. He is represented in the collections of, among others, Musée d’Orsay, Musée Rodin and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. While Thaulow is still well known among most Norwegians, the attention devoted to his art by institutions and scholars has been slight, compared with its compass and the recognition it had initially achieved. It is therefore with great enthusiasm that VKL could invite its visitors to enjoy his works in an institutional context, and we hoped that the local connections on show provided a fascinating introduction to Frits Thaulow’s work.

(The book published on the occasion of the exhibition can be bought in our bookstore.)

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Installation photography: Nina Ansten

Participating artists

• Frits Thaulow