Norwegian naturalism. The naturalistic tendency in art
had a background for its striving in the general development
of the nation and in revolutions that were taking place in
the various domains of culture during those years. The
painters themselves were only a small band in the advancing
army which at that period was breaking a way for itself
through barriers of tradition.

The salty stream which from the dramas of Ibsen flowed
through the intellectual life of the land, and of Europe, with
the lofty sky of individualism above it, the fresh mountain
wind which came forth from the poetry and the rousing
activities of Björnson, the purifying fire of Georg Brandes's
criticism, the passion for truth in the books of Garborg and
Jæger, and the waves of radicalism that rolled high in
national politics, all these things formed the domestic
background for the battle in which the painters were
engaged.

The background, meanwhile, broadens out. Behind the
young pilgrims returning from Paris we descry revolutions
and formative events in the cultural life of Europe through-
out all the fields of thought, of art, of social consciousness.
The positivistic philosophy with its revaluation of old stand-
ards constitutes in a way the remotest part of the perspec-
tive. The sobering effect of naturalistic research upon
science, sociology, and art comes next in importance. Men
began to take into more systematic account the experiences
of the senses. As a twin brother of empiricism in science,
naturalism in art grew more vigorous. And under the influ-
ence of the individualistic and anarchistic tendencies that
gave the strongest incentives to the minds of men during the
nineteenth century, naturalism became impressionism. As
the actual soil from which all these things burst into being
we perceive democracy itself, vast, extensive, restlessly heav-
ing with repressed discontent and earth-bound dreams of
happiness--the desire for social revolution as the foundation
of it all. The revival in Norwegian painting was thus
merely a reflexion from deep intellectual currents that shook
the world in their passing.

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