Ibsen says that as a boy he attended Skien's public drawing school in the years 1840 and 1841 and that he received guidance in oil painting from the young landscape painter Mikkel Mandt from Dalen in Telemark. A painting has been preserved that is supposed to be by Ibsen and which is usually interpreted generally as a "typical fjord landscape", but which is clearly the view of Bandak from Dalen. This means that Ibsen's painting has an important motif for both the history of Skien and the history of his own family. It shows the place where whetstones from Eidsborg were loaded for transport through the waterway further down to Skien and behind the large mountain ridge in the background lies Lårdal, which was the starting point for the patrician class Blom and the family of Ibsen's mother, Paus.
It is uncertain whether Ibsen actually visited Dalen and that the painting is therefore only a copy of a painting by Mikkel Mandt. Ibsen eventually found another art form and other motifs. For a new era had now come with new actors with new values, new ideals and new thoughts, but they too started at Handelstorget in Skien.