October 20, 1847

It was a complicated circle. One strand of this late 19th century Norwegian artists group was Milly Thaulow, who, with an admiral for a father, and her marriage, to Carl Thaulow, a captain in the medical corps counted as a "prominent" member of society. She was especially fond of cats. Her living room featured, along with cats, original art, some of it painted by her brother-in-law, Frits Thaulow (October 20, 1847 to November 5, 1906).

Milly was young and pretty, and having an affair with Edvard Munch. Munch wrote a novel about their relations, and that manuscript is where we learn that Milly could be evasive by thrusting a cat into the arms of Edvard.

Milly's husband was a cousin of Munch's. As obviously was Frits. Frits Thaulow was a patron of Edvard Munch's and himself an artist. He went out of his way to buy Munch's art, and arrange for grants for Munch. Munch at this time was so poor that he used cardboard from the trash, both sides, for his own painting. Both the avant garde and the establishment praised Frits Thaulow's snow scenes. Claude Monet, traveled to Norway for the purpose of meeting Thaulow. When you consider that the landscapes of Thaulow's are superior to those of Munch's, according to past and some present critics, the threads of the circle get crossed again.

Sue Prideaux is an art historian and it is her book, Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream (2007), where we learn these details. And that Frits Thaulow was married to the sister of Gauguin's wife. Mette Gad Thaulow would leave Frits for another intellectual (Georg Brandes). Dark Nordic stories, and so it is not so surprising to learn Ibsen based the character of Dr. Stockman in The Enemy of The People on the chemist father of Frits Thaulow.