Peder Balke, National Gallery

One might be forgiven for finding ‘Peder Balke’ an unfamiliar name. Now regarded as Scandinavia’s premier Romantic painter, artist Peder Balke was virtually unrecognized in his lifetime and largely produced work for his own amusement. He has languished in relative obscurity ever since.
This November, a fifty-strong Peder Balke paintings at the National Gallery London seeks to jog our collective memory, and rightfully re-position Balke as a great master of landscape painting and one of Norway’s finest cultural exports. So if the crowds around the National Gallery Rembrandt exhibition are too much to handle, take a breath with these spectacular paintings.
National Gallery London highlights
Highlights in this exhibition are Balke’s exuberant brushwork which he rendered with his bare hands and the exotic subjects of his paintings, recorded from his travels to the farthest edges of the known world. Thankfully, the swirling vistas from his pioneering artic trips can now be viewed some few thousand miles south in this free London exhibition.
Only a handful of these paintings have ever been seen in the UK before, making this a wonderful opportunity to glimpse the theatrical landscapes of Peder Balke. And with so much attention being given to one of the best exhibitions in London of Late Turner at the Tate Britain, consider Balke his contemporary Scandinavian counterpart – less touted, but no less stirring.