Riverside, View of Abbeville 1894

Frits Thaulow painted Riverside, View of Abbeville with oil on canvas. At first glance, this painting appears to be a tranquil, picturesque scene of a European riverside town, but let's consider the broader context in which it was created. Thaulow, a Norwegian artist, painted this scene in France, a country then undergoing rapid industrialization and urbanization. The painting perhaps romanticizes the pre-industrial era, before the disruption of traditional ways of life. The composition, with its focus on water and the close proximity of buildings to the river, implies the symbiosis of town and nature. It is very much in line with academic art and impressionism which were the official styles of the time. To truly understand a work like this, one might delve into studies of urbanization and the history of water use in late 19th-century France. Such research underscores that art is always created within specific social and institutional settings.