Peder Balke

Peder Balke
(Hedemarken, Norway 1804 - 1887 Oslo)

Landscape from Finnmark, c.1860

Oil on canvas mounted on cardboard, 35 x 52 cm

Provenance:
Oslo, Blomqvist Auctions, April 11, 2000, lot 251;
Asbjørn Lunde (1927-2017), New York.

Exhibited:
- Den ville natur. Sveitisk og norsk romantikk. Malerier fra Asbjørn Lundes samling, New York, Tromsø, Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum and Bergen Billedgalleri, 2007-8, no.46, repr. p. 131;
- Forests, Rocks, Torrents: Norwegian and Swiss Landscapes from the Lunde Collection, London, National Gallery, 2011, no. 13, repr. p. 35;
- Peder Balke: Visjon og revolusjon, Tromsø, Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, 2014, no. 31, repr. p. 15;
- Paintings by Peder Balke, London, National Gallery, 2014-2015, no.17, repr. p. 80;
- Peder Balke: Painter of Northern Light, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, April-July 2017.

 

Peder Balke’s landscapes draw their inspiration from the rugged scenery of northern Norway. This he first experienced on a trip to Finnmark, an area he explored from spring through fall 1832. The journey took him from Trondheim to Vardø and Vadsø in the extreme east, via the North Cape.[1] This sketching trip was of central importance to his further development. The observation of landscapes and the motifs he accumulated on his travels recur continually in his later work. Topographical accuracy and descriptive truth were not his objectives. His interest lay in eloquent single subjects – starkly exaggerated images of the uncontrollable forces of nature as they affect the lives of the population. Reflecting on his travels in the far north of Norway, Balke wrote: [...] the grandiose and enchanting impression made on the eye and the mind by the wealth of natural beauty and the incomparable situations, an impression that not only overwhelmed me, then and there, in the intoxication of the moment, but also exerted a decisive influence on my entire later life [...], for in these northerly parts it is the beauty of nature that takes the leading role, whereas nature’s living children, human beings, merely occupy a position subordinate to them.[2]

Our painting is thought to have been executed some thirty years later, in the 1860s. Balke probably developed the Romantic penchant for depicting lonely trees set in stark landscapes after seeing paintings by Johan Christian Dahl and Caspar David Friedrich in the 1830s in Dresden. There is a larger variant of this subject (current whereabouts unknown) animated by two figures in the costume of the Sami, the indigenous people of Finnmark.

The absence of an art academy in Norway gave Balke good reason to leave the country in 1828 and to enroll at the Stockholm Academy of Art. In 1830, he visited Copenhagen where the paintings of Dahl impressed him greatly. In the summers he continued to travel extensively in Norway and in 1832 embarked on his first journey to northern Norway. In 1835, he stayed in Dresden for several months with Dahl and Friedrich.[3] He travelled on to Paris where he came into contact with the Norwegian landscapist Thomas Fearnley.

Back in Norway in the early 1840s, he began to produce the first of his major works, although public recognition was largely lacking. Commissions were in short supply and in 1844 he resolved to leave Norway for Paris. He managed to obtain an audience with King Louis-Philippe who was eager to meet him – he had visited the north of Norway as a young man fleeing the French after the Revolution. Balke showed him the oil sketches of northern Norway he had brought with him to Paris. Louis-Philippe, impressed by their quality, selected a group to be worked up as large-format paintings. Balke’s future as an artist seemed secure, but events in the run-up to the 1848 Revolution intervened. The King was forced to abdicate and this important commission was never brought to fruition. But the Twenty-six sketches are preserved and are now on permanent exhibition at the Louvre. In late 1847, Balke was compelled to leave Paris. He returned briefly to Dresden, but decided to travel to London in the spring of 1849. Here, he was able to study the work of JMW Turner. This influence was almost certainly a major contributing factor to the growing radical tendencies in Balke’s style.[4]

Balke settled in Norway permanently in 1850. He joined a socialist workers’ movement and took on a number of social and political commitments. He engaged in social projects and was involved in founding a community based on utopian ideals. Despite the persistent lack of public recognition, he continued to paint, producing the important body of work on which his reputation now rests.[5]

Balke’s work has been rediscovered in recent years. His achievement is now widely recognized and he has been honored with a number of solo exhibitions, the first of which was staged in Scandinavia at the Northern Norway Art Museum in Tromsø. This was followed by a major exhibition at the National Gallery in London held in 2014-15. A third exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was held in 2017.[6]


  1. See Paintings by Peder Balke, exhib. cat., London, National Gallery and Tromsø, Northern Norway Art Museum, London 2014, p. 64.
  2. Cited after Peder Balke. Ein Pionier der Moderne, op. cit., p. 10.
  3. In Dresden, Balke came under the influence of Friedrich and Dahl. Dahl was a fellow countryman and shared lodgings with Friedrich. Balke was drawn to Friedrich’s handling of nature and this was to have a lasting influence on his work. See Knut Ljøgodt, ‘In Quest of the Sublime: Peder Balke and the Romantic Discovery of the North’, in Paintings by Peder Balke, op. cit., p. 52.
  4. The first solo exhibition of Balke’s work in Britain was staged by the National Gallery in London and ran from 14 November 2014 to 15 April 2015.
  5. See Marit Ingeborg Lange, ‘Peder Balke: Vision and Revolution’, in Paintings by Peder Balke Paintings by Peder Balke, op. cit., pp. 6-41.
  6. Peder Balke: Painter of Northern Light, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10 April - 9 July 2017. See <http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2017/peder-balke> (accessed 18 November 2020).

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