Christian Skredsvig

The present work belongs to the extensive preparatory stages for what was to become one of Skredsvig's most celebrated paintings, "Ballade". It was painted in Paris in the late winter of 1884 - the same year it was accepted at the Paris Salon. The painting is now in the Lillehammer Museum, Norway.

Skredsvig made his first trip from Paris to Normandy in the summer of 1880, where he remained until the autumn of that year. He made sketches for several of his major works, "Farm in Venoix" (Reims museum) and "Ballade". A rich source of inspiration was to be found in the town of Caen, with its distinctive castle.

Skredsvig was deeply interested in history, and mentioned to, fellow Norwegian painter, Erik Werenskiold that he was using a line from an old Danish ballad as inspiration for a painting. The ballad describes how, after a fierce battle between the Swedes and the Danes in 1208, "bleeding, the horses returned, and their saddles were empty". Back in his studio in Montmartre in Paris, Skredsvig painted a work in a vertical format, completed in 1881, where the rider-less horses stand before the castle gate having, as horses do, returned of their own accord. Three years later he painted the more ambitious (3-metre-long) version (the work in Lillehammer Museum). The painting shows much more of the French landscape. It is more dramatic compositionally, and the horses appear more wounded. He also uses artistic licence to relocate the castle of Caen from the town centre to the countryside, using the small village of Meudon, outside Paris, as the setting. This was a favourite place to paint for Skredsvig and other Nordic painters.

In the years between the 1881 and 1884 versions of "Ballade" Skredsvig painted a number of studies and sketches which focus on various parts of the composition; he clearly wanted to get the balance of the work right. He studied the landscape, resulting in works including "Fra Meudon", Jan. 1884 (Lillehammer museum) ans also the horses from different angles: "Den grå hesten" - 18 Jan. 1884, Paris and "Den hvite, sårede hesten" - Jan. 1884, Paris.

"Ballade" was considered a masterpiece, even during the artist's lifetime. Although he wrote the following almost twenty years after completing the painting, it clearly had a strong resonance with him:

"Steam from the horses wavered in the air. Strand [pseudonym for Skredsvig] feverishly noted what he saw in his sketchbook. The white horse in the foreground stepped right into the light from the door to the stable. It would become a picture after all - perhaps a masterpiece! Saturated with colour, tranquility and greatness" (Extract from Skredsvig's book "Mollerens Son [The Son of a Miller], published in 1912 and cited in "Christian Skredsvig", 2018, p. 97).