Peder Balke Catalogue Raisonné Project
PEDER BALKE: INTRODUCTION
The Norwegian painter Peder Balke is to be regarded as one of the most original landscape artists of the Romantic movement in Scandinavia and Northern Europe – both for his highly experimental, painterly style and for his depictions of the Arctic nature of Northern Norway. His oeuvre was for many years forgotten or marginalized, and it was only during the 20th century that his paintings were gradually rediscovered and recognized. Today, Balke is an established figure in the canon of Norwegian art, and for the past couple of decades his works have also gained international recognition.
Peder Andersen Balke (1804–1887) was born and grew up at the Isle of Helgøya in Lake Mjøsa Eastern Norway. During his youth, he moved to the village of Toten at the mainland, where he was apprenticed to a local painter’s workshop. At this stage, he also adapted the surname of “Balke” after the farm where he lived for a period. Balke was not the only Scandinavian artist of the period who started his career as artisan; a young person of a poor background with artistic ambitions had to take the opportunities that arose. Also, Norway was at the time a young nation, having gained a certain autonomy only in 1814 – though being forced into a union with the neighbour country Sweden – and had not yet an art academy of its own.
1827–29, Balke attended the Royal Drawing School in the capital of Christiania (today Oslo) and decided that the wanted to concentrate on landscape painting. He went on to Stockholm in 1829–33 to study with Carl Johan Fahlcrantz, Sweden’s leading landscape painter of the period and a professor at the city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts. It was at this period of his life, during the summer of 1832, that Balke made a journey to the northernmost parts of Norway; travelling by land and along the coast. He was among the first artists to visit this region and a pioneer in depicting its landscape. The dramatic, desolate Arctic nature of the region would make a lasting impression on the young artist – and he continued to depict this landscape throughout his career.
Balke realized himself the need to further his artistic education, and for this reason studied with his famous compatriot, Johan Christian Dahl, in Dresden; first for a few monts in 1835–36 and later for an entire year 1843–44. Dahl had settled in Dresden, becoming a professor at the city’s art academy and a close friend of Caspar David Friedrich and his circle of German Romantics. The visionary art of Friedrich and German Romanticism would in the long term be of great impact also to Balke’s landscape painting.
In the 1840s, the artist travelled extensively in Europe. He studied in the museums and collections of the capitals, while at the same time on looking for new markets to sell his art. During a sojourn in Paris 1847–48, Balke managed to get in contact with Louis Philippe, King of the French, who in his youth had visited the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The encounter resulted in the King purchasing of a series of sketches and in addition commissioned the Norwegian artist to execute a series of landscape paintings for Château de Versailles. Due to the February Revolution of 1848, Louis Philippe was forced to flee the country and Balke lost a commission that very likely would have represented his international breakthrough. However, 26 sketches and two landscape paintings are preserved in the collections of the Musée du Louvre.
Settling in Oslo around 1850, Balke’s work was met with little understanding from the Norwegian art establishment. He stopped participating in public art life and did not exhibit his works anymore. Instead, he concentrated on his career as a business, which was rather successful for a period, and on his social and political commitments – being a sympathizer of the emerging labour movement in Norway and encouraging social reform. He funded an ambitious housing project for working families nicknamed “Balkeby” (Balke Town) on the outskirts of the capital, which later burnt down.
Though he stopped exhibiting, Balke continued to paint for the most of his life. The works from his latest period, 1860s-70s, are today considered among his most interesting and experimental works. They were based on a technique the artist himself had developed. On a ground of white paint, he added thin paint, often of a limited palette. The thinned painted layers would then be partly removed; wiped away with different tools such as a brush, a cloth, a palette knife or occasionally even the painter’s hand. From the 1860s onwards, Balke would add colour more sparingly or remove it, allowing the white ground to dominate the composition, while in the 1870s, his works were mostly small-scale black and white paintings. The result is a simplified composition, suitable to enhance the visionary aspects of the landscapes, at times approaching abstraction. For this reason, posterity has sometimes hailed Balke as a pioneer of Modernist painting, comparable to e.g. J.W.M. Turner, Victor Hugo, or Eugenio Lucas Vélazquez.
After his death in 1887 as a broken man, Balke was largely forgotten as an artist. His works were only brought back into the limelight by a large-scale exhibition in 1914, when Norway celebrated the centennial of its constitution. This eventually resulted in other exhibitions and publications – and a gradual recognition of the artist in his native country during the 20th century.
Today, we see an increased interest in Balke’s painting, both in Norway and internationally. An exhibition in Krems, Austria and Copenhagen (2008–09) consisted of ca. 40 works. In 2014–15, London’s National Gallery showed a monographic exhibition of some 70 works – organized in collaboration with Northern Norway Art Museum – which was seen by more than 240 000 visitors. This renewed interest lead to a one room display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2017); mostly based on US collections. “Sauvages nudités” – presented at the Château de Fontainebleau in connection with the Festival de l’histoire de l’art in 2019 – showcased nine paintings by Balke from French and Norwegian collections, alongside works by François-Auguste Biard and Anna-Eva Bergmann. Lately, Balke’s works have also been exhibited in museums in Madrid and Helsinki.
ABOUT THE CATALOGUE RAISONNÈ
Peder Balke was a highly productive painter, and there is a large number of his works in private collections. Meanwhile public collections and museums internationally are building up holdings of his works, impulsing an increased interest in the artist both in academia and in the art market. A concise and authoritative catalogue of his works is therefore of great importance.
The Peder Balke Catalogue Raisonné project is formally initiated in the end of 2025. A preliminary version is projected to be available digitally from 2029, and a printed catalogue from 2030 earliest.
Editor in chief and author: Knut Ljøgodt
Researcher: Ann Falahat
The Peder Balke Catalogue Raisonné is generously supported by Sparebankstiftelsen DNB
(The Savings Bank Foundation). The project has also recieved support from The Gundersen Collection.
Peder Balke, From Vardøhus Fortress (1860's).
The Gundersen Collection
The Nordic Institute of Art is an independent organisation with the mission to stimulate the research on and interest in art history from the Nordic region in an international context.