The Norwegian landscape painter Peder Balke (1804-1887) has received international acclaim recently, with exhibitions at the National Gallery in London in 2014 and at the MET in New York in 2017. His work forms pride of place in the 19th century permanent exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.
What has attracted this recent international attention is the way in which Balke, in a rather unique way, produced mainly small-format landscape paintings in a surprisingly modern way during the 1860s and 1870s. Based on his travels to the north cape during his younger years, the painter returned to the theme during his mature years, when he would seek to reduce the landscapes that had settled in his memory to almost abstractly-layered compositions, using a simple wet-in-wet technique. Our panel Waterfall is a superb example of this.
Balke has manually superimposed layers of paint, rubbing it in across the panel using his hands, as indicated by the artist's fingerprints. He has used the white ground priming underneath to suggest light, with small ridges of colour left visible to suggest depth. By so doing, he has achieved a remarkable contrast between the foaming white of the cascading water and the dark crevices of the surrounding rocks [1].
Peder Balke was born in 1804 and became apprenticed to a local housepainter when he was fourteen years of age. His desire to become an artist led him to enrol at the Royal Drawing School in Oslo, where he attended classes between 1827-29. Between 1829-33 he stayed in Stockholm, where he studied intermittently under the Swedish landscape artist Carl Johan Fahlcrantz. In 1832 he completed a journey by ship along the coast from western Norway all the way up to the far north of the country. It was this journey that left such an indelible imprint on his mind, and which he was to elaborate many years later. Our panel Waterfall is essentially a reconstruction of Balke's experiences on that journey.
Throughout the 1830s and 1840s Balke led a peripatetic life, traveling throughout Europe, for example Germany, where he met Caspar David Friedrich and later spent some time studying under his compatriot J.C. Dahl. Although Balke had success in selling his work throughout the 1840s, and was even commissioned to produce a number of large-format Norwegian landscapes for French King Louis-Philippe, his artistic career slowed to a halt after about 1850 [2]. By then he was back in his native Oslo, and spent more and more of his time dedicated to political work aimed at improving the lot of the disadvantaged, which included developing social housing projects, such as Balkeby, an estate on the outskirts of the capital, named after the artist.
Nevertheless, as we now know, Balke never ceased painting and produced perhaps the most forward-looking part of his over in his later years. Although our panel is signed but undated, it can be placed somewhere in the 1860s [3]. The exact location of the waterfall depicted is uncertain, but it might be the Rjukan falls in south-east Norway, which Balke visited in the 1830s.
_____________________
1. See for Balke's technique: Dieter Buchhart and Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark (ed): "Peder Balke. Ein Pionier der Moderne" ,exh. cat. Kunsthalle Krems and Ordrupgaard, (Heidelberg 2008), pp. 28-45.
2. Although the surviving sketches for these commissioned paintings, 26 in all, today are prominently on display in the Louvre in Paris. The paintings themselves were never completed, as the revolutionary events of 1848 drove a cart and horses through this project: the king had to abdicate and Balke himself left France, never to return and eventually settling back in Norway in 1850.
3. We thank the leading Balke-expert Dr. Marit Lange for providing this information.
What has attracted this recent international attention is the way in which Balke, in a rather unique way, produced mainly small-format landscape paintings in a surprisingly modern way during the 1860s and 1870s. Based on his travels to the north cape during his younger years, the painter returned to the theme during his mature years, when he would seek to reduce the landscapes that had settled in his memory to almost abstractly-layered compositions, using a simple wet-in-wet technique. Our panel Waterfall is a superb example of this.
Balke has manually superimposed layers of paint, rubbing it in across the panel using his hands, as indicated by the artist's fingerprints. He has used the white ground priming underneath to suggest light, with small ridges of colour left visible to suggest depth. By so doing, he has achieved a remarkable contrast between the foaming white of the cascading water and the dark crevices of the surrounding rocks [1].
Peder Balke was born in 1804 and became apprenticed to a local housepainter when he was fourteen years of age. His desire to become an artist led him to enrol at the Royal Drawing School in Oslo, where he attended classes between 1827-29. Between 1829-33 he stayed in Stockholm, where he studied intermittently under the Swedish landscape artist Carl Johan Fahlcrantz. In 1832 he completed a journey by ship along the coast from western Norway all the way up to the far north of the country. It was this journey that left such an indelible imprint on his mind, and which he was to elaborate many years later. Our panel Waterfall is essentially a reconstruction of Balke's experiences on that journey.
Throughout the 1830s and 1840s Balke led a peripatetic life, traveling throughout Europe, for example Germany, where he met Caspar David Friedrich and later spent some time studying under his compatriot J.C. Dahl. Although Balke had success in selling his work throughout the 1840s, and was even commissioned to produce a number of large-format Norwegian landscapes for French King Louis-Philippe, his artistic career slowed to a halt after about 1850 [2]. By then he was back in his native Oslo, and spent more and more of his time dedicated to political work aimed at improving the lot of the disadvantaged, which included developing social housing projects, such as Balkeby, an estate on the outskirts of the capital, named after the artist.
Nevertheless, as we now know, Balke never ceased painting and produced perhaps the most forward-looking part of his over in his later years. Although our panel is signed but undated, it can be placed somewhere in the 1860s [3]. The exact location of the waterfall depicted is uncertain, but it might be the Rjukan falls in south-east Norway, which Balke visited in the 1830s.
_____________________
1. See for Balke's technique: Dieter Buchhart and Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark (ed): "Peder Balke. Ein Pionier der Moderne" ,exh. cat. Kunsthalle Krems and Ordrupgaard, (Heidelberg 2008), pp. 28-45.
2. Although the surviving sketches for these commissioned paintings, 26 in all, today are prominently on display in the Louvre in Paris. The paintings themselves were never completed, as the revolutionary events of 1848 drove a cart and horses through this project: the king had to abdicate and Balke himself left France, never to return and eventually settling back in Norway in 1850.
3. We thank the leading Balke-expert Dr. Marit Lange for providing this information.
Waterfall
Signed lower right: Balke
Oil on panel
12 x 10 cm
Provenance
Collection Emma Schiølberg, the artist's granddaughter, Norway;Thence by descent
Exhibitions
Peder Balke 1804-1887, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, 4-28 November 1954, no. 162 (exh.cat. p.22), as "Foss" (Waterfall).With exhibition stamp on the verso
The Norwegian landscape painter Peder Balke (1804-1887) has received international acclaim recently, with exhibitions at the National Gallery in London in 2014 and at the MET in New York in 2017. His work forms pride of place in the 19th century permanent exhibition at the Louvre in Paris.
What has attracted this recent international attention is the way in which Balke, in a rather unique way, produced mainly small-format landscape paintings in a surprisingly modern way during the 1860s and 1870s. Based on his travels to the north cape during his younger years, the painter returned to the theme during his mature years, when he would seek to reduce the landscapes that had settled in his memory to almost abstractly-layered compositions, using a simple wet-in-wet technique. Our panel Waterfall is a superb example of this.
Balke has manually superimposed layers of paint, rubbing it in across the panel using his hands, as indicated by the artist's fingerprints. He has used the white ground priming underneath to suggest light, with small ridges of colour left visible to suggest depth. By so doing, he has achieved a remarkable contrast between the foaming white of the cascading water and the dark crevices of the surrounding rocks [1].
Peder Balke was born in 1804 and became apprenticed to a local housepainter when he was fourteen years of age. His desire to become an artist led him to enrol at the Royal Drawing School in Oslo, where he attended classes between 1827-29. Between 1829-33 he stayed in Stockholm, where he studied intermittently under the Swedish landscape artist Carl Johan Fahlcrantz. In 1832 he completed a journey by ship along the coast from western Norway all the way up to the far north of the country. It was this journey that left such an indelible imprint on his mind, and which he was to elaborate many years later. Our panel Waterfall is essentially a reconstruction of Balke's experiences on that journey.
Throughout the 1830s and 1840s Balke led a peripatetic life, traveling throughout Europe, for example Germany, where he met Caspar David Friedrich and later spent some time studying under his compatriot J.C. Dahl. Although Balke had success in selling his work throughout the 1840s, and was even commissioned to produce a number of large-format Norwegian landscapes for French King Louis-Philippe, his artistic career slowed to a halt after about 1850 [2]. By then he was back in his native Oslo, and spent more and more of his time dedicated to political work aimed at improving the lot of the disadvantaged, which included developing social housing projects, such as Balkeby, an estate on the outskirts of the capital, named after the artist.
Nevertheless, as we now know, Balke never ceased painting and produced perhaps the most forward-looking part of his over in his later years. Although our panel is signed but undated, it can be placed somewhere in the 1860s [3]. The exact location of the waterfall depicted is uncertain, but it might be the Rjukan falls in south-east Norway, which Balke visited in the 1830s.
_____________________
1. See for Balke's technique: Dieter Buchhart and Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark (ed): "Peder Balke. Ein Pionier der Moderne" ,exh. cat. Kunsthalle Krems and Ordrupgaard, (Heidelberg 2008), pp. 28-45.
2. Although the surviving sketches for these commissioned paintings, 26 in all, today are prominently on display in the Louvre in Paris. The paintings themselves were never completed, as the revolutionary events of 1848 drove a cart and horses through this project: the king had to abdicate and Balke himself left France, never to return and eventually settling back in Norway in 1850.
3. We thank the leading Balke-expert Dr. Marit Lange for providing this information.
What has attracted this recent international attention is the way in which Balke, in a rather unique way, produced mainly small-format landscape paintings in a surprisingly modern way during the 1860s and 1870s. Based on his travels to the north cape during his younger years, the painter returned to the theme during his mature years, when he would seek to reduce the landscapes that had settled in his memory to almost abstractly-layered compositions, using a simple wet-in-wet technique. Our panel Waterfall is a superb example of this.
Balke has manually superimposed layers of paint, rubbing it in across the panel using his hands, as indicated by the artist's fingerprints. He has used the white ground priming underneath to suggest light, with small ridges of colour left visible to suggest depth. By so doing, he has achieved a remarkable contrast between the foaming white of the cascading water and the dark crevices of the surrounding rocks [1].
Peder Balke was born in 1804 and became apprenticed to a local housepainter when he was fourteen years of age. His desire to become an artist led him to enrol at the Royal Drawing School in Oslo, where he attended classes between 1827-29. Between 1829-33 he stayed in Stockholm, where he studied intermittently under the Swedish landscape artist Carl Johan Fahlcrantz. In 1832 he completed a journey by ship along the coast from western Norway all the way up to the far north of the country. It was this journey that left such an indelible imprint on his mind, and which he was to elaborate many years later. Our panel Waterfall is essentially a reconstruction of Balke's experiences on that journey.
Throughout the 1830s and 1840s Balke led a peripatetic life, traveling throughout Europe, for example Germany, where he met Caspar David Friedrich and later spent some time studying under his compatriot J.C. Dahl. Although Balke had success in selling his work throughout the 1840s, and was even commissioned to produce a number of large-format Norwegian landscapes for French King Louis-Philippe, his artistic career slowed to a halt after about 1850 [2]. By then he was back in his native Oslo, and spent more and more of his time dedicated to political work aimed at improving the lot of the disadvantaged, which included developing social housing projects, such as Balkeby, an estate on the outskirts of the capital, named after the artist.
Nevertheless, as we now know, Balke never ceased painting and produced perhaps the most forward-looking part of his over in his later years. Although our panel is signed but undated, it can be placed somewhere in the 1860s [3]. The exact location of the waterfall depicted is uncertain, but it might be the Rjukan falls in south-east Norway, which Balke visited in the 1830s.
_____________________
1. See for Balke's technique: Dieter Buchhart and Anne-Birgitte Fonsmark (ed): "Peder Balke. Ein Pionier der Moderne" ,exh. cat. Kunsthalle Krems and Ordrupgaard, (Heidelberg 2008), pp. 28-45.
2. Although the surviving sketches for these commissioned paintings, 26 in all, today are prominently on display in the Louvre in Paris. The paintings themselves were never completed, as the revolutionary events of 1848 drove a cart and horses through this project: the king had to abdicate and Balke himself left France, never to return and eventually settling back in Norway in 1850.
3. We thank the leading Balke-expert Dr. Marit Lange for providing this information.
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