Peder Balke: Norwegian Romanticist Who Painted the Extreme North

Key facts

• Peder Balke grew up in the Norwegian countryside and decorated farmhouses to pay for his education.
• In the late 1820s and early 1830s, he trained as an engraver and painter, including at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts.
• He was a pupil of Johan Christian Dahl, who is said to have introduced him to Caspar David Friedrich.
• Balke travelled extensively in the 1830s, with a tour of the Finnmark region leading him to the North Cape, a favorite subject.
• His early works of the 1830s and 1840s sold to the Royal Palace of Sweden and the King of France for the Palace of Versailles.
• In the 1860s, Balke gave up painting as a profession to pursue politics, laying out plans for an affordable housing suburb called Balkeby, now within Oslo.
• He continued to paint as a hobby, with later works becoming starker, darker, and more abstract, often on small canvases with a monochromatic black-and-white palette.
• Balke died in Norway in 1887; his collection is now primarily spread across Norway and Sweden, with some paintings in private collections.