VIRTUALLY all of the painters in the older genera-
tion of naturalists were products of an urban cul-
ture. Collett, Thaulow, Krohg, Werenskiold,
Munthe, Diriks, Glöersen and others were sons of men in
the official class or of men who had received an academic
training. For their own part, they had perhaps finished a
Latin school or taken some examination or other at the
University. The only farmer's son among them was
Skredsvig. The more remarkable it is that this man of
country origin permitted himself to a greater extent than
other painters in the group to be overwhelmed by French
influence. The grey keynote that he acquired in Paris about
1880 he has retained throughout life. Christian Skredsvig
was born at Modum in 1854 of a family in straitened
circumstances. In early youth, however, he received assist-
ance toward developing his natural aptitudes. At the age
of fifteen he became a pupil of Eckersberg in Christiania;
later, in 1875, he went to Munich, where he remained three
years. Skredsvig has a lighter and more diaphanous color-
ing than other young Norwegian painters who learned the
elements in German schools. The Munich brown which
many of them had a great deal of trouble in getting rid of
has never given him any difficulty.

In 1879 Skredsvig came to Paris, where he continued his
studies and associated much with the Swedish artists known
as the "Opponents." It is amusingly characteristic of the
Modum boy's stay in Paris that it was a heavy snowfall that
first engaged his interest there. As it happens, one of his

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