When Edvard Munch visited Modum

Approx. 12 minutes reading time.

The year before, most of his peers had travelled with Frits Thaulow to Modum, where they stayed at Madame Reiff's boarding house in the old builder's yard at Haugfossen. Within a few years, Thaulow had become a well-known artist who, with his French-inspired modern ideas about truthfulness in art, came to mean a lot to young people in the 1880s.

The concept of Modum

At the Autumn Exhibition in 1883, Modum became a household name, «So insolent that they offered people ‘roof tiles’ set in frames. They just painted with pure blue, white and green - especially blue», the painter Christian Krohg recalled a few years later. Munch had not had time to join the trip in 1883, but he must have heard a lot about Modum in the intervening year. Almost all of his peers had visited the place, and several had painted paintings that attracted attention there.

The young Munch was a well-mannered, somewhat shy man, with great faith in his own abilities as a visual artist. Until now, he had perhaps not quite found the subject that would allow his abilities to be utilised to the full. And at Modum, according to a letter he wrote to colleague and friend Olav Paulsen, he found a motif that was «far too beautiful for me not to use it».

It's been a long time since Modum was an agricultural village. The industry that grew up around the cobalt extraction gave the place a village character, with a lot of life between the houses. The large Haugfossen waterfall had been the driving force behind all the mechanical processes in the blue colour factory. The year before, Thaulow had had great success with the waterfall as a motif, which also led to the painting being purchased for the National Gallery's collection.

Thaulow

Frits Thaulow was familiar with Modum and Blaafarveværket, so it is not surprising that this was the place he chose to realise a change of direction in art. Dr Heinrich Arnold Thaulow was his uncle, and the doctor's residence at Modum was a meeting place for the doctor's family and friends for more than 50 years. For Munch, the distant relatives in the doctor's residence were also of great importance.

Relatively young Norway lacked most of the things an artist might need, apart from the motifs that were in demand among a European audience. Artists such as J.C. Dahl, Hans Fredrik Gude and Adolph Tidemand had given shape to the Norwegian motif, but produced their paintings abroad, mainly for an international audience. Exhibition opportunities in Norway were fairly random, and for Thaulow - and some of his peers, such as Christian Krohg and Erik Werenskiold - the first step in strengthening the art scene in Norway was to organise an exhibition where the artistic aspect was to be the most important, and the ability to please the public's need to dress up was secondary. The Autumn Exhibition of 1882 was an important step in this direction, as was the practice of trained artists taking younger artists into their studios or inviting them to paint together in the countryside, rather than spending years with second-rate academics abroad.

For Frits Thaulow it was «colonies» at Modum at a time when he had an artistic release, and found a fairly limited circle of motifs that would soon make his pictures known and recognised, namely water - portrayed as if it were really rippling as it flows silently past us.

The actual colony was over when Thaulow painted Simoa at Blaafarveværket just before returning to Kristiania at Christmas time in 1883, solving two painterly challenges: how to give the illusion of movement and what white snow looks like. In his own words:

«it was like a dam broke. I painted from morning to night. Everything succeeded for me, I painted more in a month than in a whole year, I forgot everything else and was quite happy and satisfied.».

Frits thaulow

This is what Thaulow wrote to his friend Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.

We don't know much about Edvard Munch's thoughts on all the other motifs that could be found in the area around Blaafarveværket. Judging by what he had been interested in so far, he could have found many possibilities during the weeks he spent at Modum. In the previous year, some 30 paintings had been executed within a radius of a few hundred metres, without resembling each other. It was, in Thaulow's words, «a picturesque region».

Of course, it's important for artists to have some subjects to paint, but the community around them plays just as big a role. As an industrial centre, Blaafvarveværket had a tradition of taking care of visitors from afar who needed accommodation for shorter or longer stays. Providing beds and meals for travellers was a constant activity, and the bigger the house, the longer people could stay.

Models Thora Emilie Dahlen

The builder's yard overlooked Haugfosstråkka. It was an extensive building that the builder's widow Anne Kirstine Reiff (1825-1903) saw the opportunity to use as a guest house after her husband's death. Trains from the Western Railway brought people to Åmot station every day, and many of them needed both catering and accommodation. Modum was also to experience a steady increase in tourism in the years to come.

In one of the letters Edvard Munch wrote home to his family, he talks about all the difficulties he has had with his painting. He has doubts about whether the picture will be good enough for an exhibition, but at the same time he is happy about the weeks he spent at Modum, «as I think I have benefited greatly from the stay».

It is a maid in Madame Reiff's boarding house who is modelling for him. Her name is Thora Emilie Dahlen and she grew up in a family of factory workers. There is an oral tradition that Mrs Reiff refused to allow all the painters to keep their painting materials in the house. She certainly didn't want the smell of turpentine or paint stains on the floors, but for Munch it must have been made an exception. In the painting Morning we see Thora sitting in one of the boarding house's rooms, pulling on a stocking. A very intimate motif for the 1880s. The 16-year-old Thora is said to have been chaperoned by her mother while the painting took place.

Munch was very careful with his modelling during this time. From his letters, we can see that he complains that the model has become very expensive, and that there have been repeated sittings Thora has had to have for Munch. Right up to the last day at Modum, he has her in front of him.

The motif shows the morning light, and all the white details in the motif - sheets, pillow, petticoat, curtains and tablecloth - provide a strong contrast to the cobalt blue wall, which so often in the Blaafarveværk's official residences was bound to the wall as glue colours created by water, horn glue, chalk and pigment. 

A few years ago, Blaafarveværket organised the exhibition «Munch and his painter friends at Modum», which gave a good indication of the motifs created at Modum in the 1880s. We have already mentioned Thaulow's watercolours and Munch's interiors, but an overview of the other artists' motifs may also be of interest. Both what was painted and, perhaps even more importantly, what was not painted. There are many depictions of the hilly landscape, with its type-produced workers' dwellings situated in a scenic location along the Simoa River, from artists such as Harald Bertrand Hansen, Lorentz Norberg, Andreas Singdahlsen and Jørgen Sørensen. Only Gustav Wentzel painted inside one of the workers' homes, where an elderly wife sits at the helm of a house clearly characterised by its 100-year history as a home. Her home is simply but tastefully decorated. Kalle Løchen - who visited Modum and Blaafarveværket many times - painted an important motif for the 1883 Autumn Exhibition called The painting school's studio at Modum, depicting a brewery in Madame Reiff's boarding house, where paintbrushes and half-finished canvases remind us that painting at Modum was on a par with international ideals, even though both the «school» and the «studio» bore little resemblance to the international models.

In the 1880s, the Blaafarveværket had fairly limited operations, having concentrated on making semi-finished products since the 1860s. The purely picturesque aspects of such a unique building with a continental character from the 18th century seem to have been of remarkably little interest to painters. From our point of view, this is rather puzzling. Shouldn't this be an opportunity to paint modernity and sadness at the same time? It is only Thorvald Torgersen who paints a motif directly related to the industrial buildings of the Blaafarveværket, in a painting depicting a mill that had burned down the year before.

The environment in Doktorgården

In the evenings, Edvard Munch has often been Dr Dedichen's messenger in Doktorgården. Dr Hans Gabriel Sundt Dedichen was married to Dr Thaulow's daughter Henriette, and succeeded his father-in-law as medical director after Modum Bad became a permanent commitment for the Thaulow family. It is said to have been Kalle Løchen, who was just as good a friend of the Dedichen sons as he was of Munch, who opened the doors to Dedichen's home. The four sons, Henrik, Hagbart, Lucien and Georg, spent all their teenage years in a combination of studies in the capital and breaks at their childhood home in Modum. They often brought friends with them to the spacious home the doctor could offer.

We can't know anything for sure about the time spent together at Doktorgården and the significance it had for Edvard Munch, but we do know a lot about the family, which allows us to imagine a stimulating environment.

His eldest son Henrik is often associated with the institution that he founded with the idea that «the insane tolerate being turned inside out better than many so-called normal people, and that there is often just as much foolishness outside as in the asylums». It is worth noting that psychiatry was still a young discipline, and Henrik Dedichen was to shape its future. Hagbart went on to work as a lawyer and initiator of power plants in Modum, while Lucien became a doctor in Kristiania, who maintained his relationship with Modum through the tuberculosis home he founded in 1908. Perhaps the person closest to Edvard Munch was Georg, who developed Dronningsjokoladen, Firkløver and Monolit while working for Freia.

Modernity seems to have been a recurring theme, not only in the Dedichen-Thaulow family, but in a large part of Modum's history during this time.

When cobalt ore was discovered in Skuterudåsen in the autumn of 1772, an unfamiliar need could be met. New products such as porcelain and earthenware were decorated in cobalt blue, which gave the table setting a cool elegance. The home and its contents became an important marker of modernity and social position. The blue dye works soon sent pigments out into the world, and despite changing market conditions, the company at Modum was Norway's largest workplace for several years. Cobalt extraction would later be replaced by the pulp industry, which in a similar way is an expression of the modern progress of its time.

The Thaulow family is closely linked to balneologies, that is, the doctrine of the meaning of «bath». Modums Bad was founded in 1854, based on a water source that was associated with the name of St Olaf, but which quickly became a fairly modern facility for an ever-growing middle class in need of «a cure». The bathing establishments can be said to be the starting point for today's spa hotels, cultural tourism and psychiatric treatment centres all in one. Naturally, Modum Bad also became an institution of public interest, attracting cultural personalities of many kinds for a long time. Edvard Munch definitely recommended his sister Inger to have a stay there.

Morning

That's about five weeks Munch had at his disposal to paint Morning. According to him, he hardly painted anything other than this one work, which he is not even sure can really become a picture for a juried exhibition in the capital. Most of the young Munch's paintings were done for friends and acquaintances, and it wasn't until a few years later that there was full agreement that he was the strongest artist of his generation - and an artist who was either admired or despised.

Morning was shown at the Autumn Exhibition in 1884. The painting was bought by Frits Thaulow, who paid generously. Munch then became part of the collection of one of the most important taste judges of the time. Two years later, Christian Krohg bought Sick pike. By the end of the century, Munch was one of Europe's most talked about artists.

Perhaps it is fair to say that the young Munch's endeavours reached their height and completion during his stay at Modum, that he now mastered the rendering of all that the eye can see. Thora, sitting on the bed, looks towards the light in a pose that reflects a person characterised by robustness and presence, even though her averted gaze may also contain a dream. In any case, Munch was absolutely right: «The motif was far too beautiful for me to refrain from using it».

The painting remained in Thaulow's possession until his death in 1907, when it was bought by Rasmus Meyer, who had ambitions to build his own national gallery for the people of western Norway. With the help of good advisors and considerable financial resources, he built up a collection over the course of a few decades that had such depth and breadth that in many respects it surpassed public collections. There were 32 paintings by Munch. In connection with a lecture given in 1937, the then director of the National Gallery, Jens Thiis, calculated how many paintings there were in the National Gallery. And there were no more than 30 paintings.

Morning has participated in some of the important Munch exhibitions abroad throughout the 20th century, but has yet to be shown in other parts of Norway, before now coming «home» to Blaafarveværket on the occasion of the celebration of 250 years of continuous resource utilisation at Modum.

More about this summer's art exhibition at Blaafarveværket here.

Images:
Edvard Munch - Morning
Madame Reiffs Pensjonat / Byggmestergården, photo: Præsterud
Interior from Søndre Dahlen (Blaafarveværket's unattended museum building at the foot of Haugfossen.