no longer noticeable. Of the same age as Nielsen, Collett,
himself a pupil of Gude and trained in Düsseldorf and Karls-
ruhe, was one of the first of our open-air painters, wholly
modern, wholly naturalistic.

Fredrik Collett was born in Christiania in 1839. He
came under the tutelage of Gude, first in Düsseldorf and
later in Karlsruhe. He studied also in Denmark and visited
Paris; but early in the eighties he established a permanent
residence in Norway. Among the naturalists of the eighties
Collett was the oldest, and his production in its continuity
proves that he belonged to a period of transition. Yet the
artistic convictions he developed in the course of years were
clear and firm. By persevering energy he brought his art up
to the notable degree of independence and maturity which
it possessed at his death. No Norwegian painter has had
a more manly profile.

Collett was one of a school of colorists, but his chief
strength lay in the plastic treatment of landscape. Profess-
ing the naturalistic dogma that art is a transcript of nature,
he strove intensely for the objective. There is, however,
unmistakable temperament in his art, and with compelling
hand he retains his hold upon nature till it yields a resultant
of style. Collett's field of study is the winter of eastern
Norway, with its great banks of snow and half-frozen
streams. He chose his themes principally from the Mesna
River near Lillehammer, where he steadfastly continued his
work out of doors up to a very great age and where also
death came to him in 1913. His Mesna pictures have a
masculine, almost harsh character, and are compactly de-
signed with massively modelled contrasts between the white
expanses of snow and the blue-black pools and open rapids.
His masterpiece is the monumental composition entitled
Mesna, dated April 1891, now in the National Gallery.

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