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| Painted in 1858 by Peder Balke |
PEDER BALKE (1804-1887)
Gaustatoppen (1,883 m - 6,178 ft)
Norway
1. In Gaustatoppen, 1877, watercolor, National gallery of Norway
2. In Gaustatoppen, 1858, oil on canvas, Private collection
The mountain
Gaustatoppen (1,883 m -6,178 ft) is the highest mountain in the county Telemark in Norway. The view from the summit is impressive, as one can see an area of approximately 60,000 kmІ, one sixth of Norway's mainland. Inside the mountain there is a railway (with an electric locomotive) that cost one million US dollars to build from 1954 to 1959. and a elevator. It was built to access the military radio station built on the top. Nowadays, mlilitary installations are not used anymore, but they are still there as a tourist attraction. The mountain is popular for downhill skiing in winter, and competitions have been held on its slopes. These competitions include the "Norseman triathlon", billed as "the world's most brutal iron-distance triathlon". It starts in Eidfjord and finishes at the top of Gaustatoppen. The summit is accessible on foot in the summer, on a rocky pathway of medium difficulty, although the southern side of the mountain is very dangerous and inaccessible.
Fist ascent was made in 1810 by Jens Esmark.
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The wreckage of an airplane crash lies there, as it is too difficult to remove it.
Peder Balke is a Norwegian painter that was even barely known in his home country, until recently. He didn’t encounter success during his lifetime. Having difficulties to sell his paintings, he abandoned his career to focus on social projects and politics but he continued to paint for his own pleasure. Once delivered from the pressure of making a living from his paintings, his style changed to become more personal, more modern.
During the summer 1832, Peder Balke, who was in love with the Norwegian landscapes, decided to go and seek for its most remote, its most desolate and its most distant points by sailing up the west coast of Norway as far as he could go. He went up to the inhospitable and barely accessible far-northern region of Finnmark. He reached the North Cape, the northernmost part of Norway, which was even more impressive at that time because it was the further north you could go, the final limit to knowledge and exploration – beyond it lies nothing (explorers only reached the North Pole in the late 1900s, two decades after his death).
Peder Balke wrote in his memoirs: “I can’t begin to describe how elated I was at having seen and re-tread the land, once again, after satisfying my deep longing to see the northern provinces. No easier is it for me to pen my thoughts on which sublime and mesmerizing impressions the wealth of natural beauty and unrivaled settings leave upon the mind of an observer. These impressions not only overwhelmed me for a brief moment, but they, too, influenced my entire future since I never yet, neither abroad nor other places in our country, have had the occasion to gaze at something so awe-inspiring and exciting as that which I observed during this journey to Finnmark. Unsurpassed in the norther provinces is the beauty of nature, while humans – nature’s children – play but a minor role, in comparison”.
The 1832 journey had a momentous effect upon his development as an artist; the eerie, isolated, dramatic and gloomy Arctic landscapes became a leitmotiv as he continued to paint them from his memory for the rest of his life.
Peder Blake’s early paintings are quintessentially romantic, the product of a man awed by nature, overwhelmed by the often-horrifying beauty of his own land.
Long forgotten, Peder Balke is today increasingly recognized as an important precursor of modern painters.
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2016 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
