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Published to accompany the exhibition Peder Balke at the National Gallery, London, 12 November 2014 – 12 April 2015.

In 1832, the Norwegian painter Peder Balke (1804–1887) travelled to the far north of Norway to the dramatic coastline of the North Cape. The experience was so profound that he built his career painting seascapes of the isolated Arctic Circle. His pictures were originally rooted in the nineteenth-century romanticism of artists such as Caspar David Friedrich and his compatriot, Johan Christian Dahl; later in his career Balke created improvised seascapes with roughly applied brushwork – sometimes using his hands, a technique that was prescient of early modern expressionism. His profile as an artist had fallen into obscurity outside of Norway, but now this book brings together a group of Balke’s pictures from collections in Europe and the United States, and introduces readers to a unique artist and personality.