Stetind im Nebel

Peder Balke first saw this mountain in 1832, on a long journey up the far northern coast of Norway that few painters ever attempted. Stetind rises more than 1,300 metres straight out of the sea, and the sight stayed with him for the rest of his life. He painted it here around 1864, decades later and from memory, by which time he had mostly stepped back from the art market and worked to please himself. That freedom shows. The picture is small and almost colourless, worked in thin greys, with two little boats and a knot of figures on a rock, dwarfed by weather. More than a century on, Norwegians voted Stetind their national mountain.