Ibsen to the conscientious romantic artists of Norway's prime. In
neither case do we wish that an Ibsen or a Pope should be secured for
the National Gallery, but it is highly significant that such earnest
students of precise excellence in another art should first of all have
schooled their eyes to exactitude by grappling with form and color.

In 1843, being fifteen years of age, Ibsen was confirmed and taken away
from school. These events marked the beginning of adolescence with a
young middle-class Norwegian of those days, for whom the future proposed
no task in life demanding a more elaborate education than the local
schoolmaster could give. Ibsen announced his wish to be a professional
artist, but that was one which could not be indulged. Until a later date
than this, every artist in Norway was forced abroad for the necessary
technical training: as a rule, students went to Dresden, because J. C.
Dahl was there; but many settled in Duesseldorf, where the teaching
attracted them. In any case, the adoption of a plastic profession meant
a long and serious expenditure of money, together with a very doubtful
prospect of ultimate remuneration. Fearnley, who had seemed the very
genius of Norwegian art, had just (1842) died, having scarcely begun to
sell his pictures, at the age of forty. It is not surprising that Knud
Ibsen, whose to were in a worse condition than ever, refused even to
consider a course of life which would entail a heavy and long-continued
expense.

Ibsen hung about at home for a few months, then, shortly before his
sixteenth birthday, he apprenticed to an apothecary of the name of Mann,
at the little town of Grimstad, between Arendal and Christianssand, on
the extreme south-east corner of the Norwegian coast. This was his home
for more than five years; here he became a poet, and here the peculiar
color and tone of his temperament were developed. So far as the genius