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Peter Marinus Thomsen

Norwegian photographer

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ33124206 ↗
Source-derived summary

Peter Marinus Thomsen (7 March 1832 – 30 March 1871) was a pioneering Norwegian photographer who, together with Christian Olsen (1813–1898) opened a photographic studio in Christiania (now Oslo) in May 1859. By 1865, he had dissolved his partnership with Olsen. That year he left his studio and his archives to Mimi Frellsen who had earlier served an apprenticeship with him.

Norwegian librarian and photo historian Susanne Bonge identified P.M. Thomsen as Marie Thomsen in her book Eldre norske fotografer; Fotografer og amatørfotografer i Norge frem til 1920 (Older Norwegian Photographers: Photographers and amateur photographers in Norway up to 1920) (1980). This was incorrect; we can with certainty link the photographer P.M. Thomsen to the merchant Peter Marinus Thomsen. This is possibly a confusion with the painter Marie Thomsen, a pupil of Christian Olsen, who in 1888 advertised that she produced oil portraits based on photographs.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Peter Marinus Thomsen” as norwegian photographer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Peter, Marinus and Thomsen.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1832, 1871, 1813, 1898—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1832-03-07. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Peter, Marinus and Thomsen providing the first useful test.
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Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Peter Marinus Thomsen”, the useful work is to connect “norwegian photographer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q33124206. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1832, 1871, 1813 and 1898.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Peter Marinus Thomsen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.