Paris, France — Virtually unknown outside of her native Norway, Harriet Backer was Norway’s best-known woman painter in the late 19th century. The Musée d’Orsay in Paris is currently presenting an exhibition of her rich body of works which will then travel on to Bergen. She was celebrated for her use of rich, luminous colors and she would produce a highly personal body of work in which scenes from inside the home are juxtaposed with her outdoor works and a rare look inside Norwegian churches and chapels. A large part of the exhibition is dedicated to pictures of musical scenes. Music was an important part of Backer’s life: her sister, Agathe Backer Grøndahl, was a famous musician in Norway and one of the main subjects of her paintings, where musical notes seemingly sing through the bold brushstrokes.

Born in Holmestrand, Norway in 1845, she was the second of four sisters. The oldest, Inga was a popular singer, Agathe was a world-famous pianist and songwriter and Margrethe was a painter as well. The exhibition takes a look at Backer’s artistic education in the great cultural capitals of the time including Munich and Paris. The show then turns to the artist’s preferred themes: rustic interiors, paintings of traditional Norwegian churches, landscapes, and her very particular approach to still-life painting. Harriet was particularly close to Agathe the pianist and she placed music at the heart of her work, both as subject and model through the use of touch, rhythm and subtle colors. Her nephew, Inge’s son, Johan Backer Lunde was also a composer and Backer herself was a trained pianist. She wanted one of her paintings, At Home, depicting the studio-apartment that Backer shared in Paris, to be « music for the eye. »

Rustic interiors, too, were a theme in which she depicted women sewing or a baby in a sling-like cradle, Church rituals, including a furtive glimpse of a baptism in one of Norway’s unique wooden churches, are another recurring theme. It is in these paintings her play with light and color is highly visible. Another one of her paintings reflects the sight of smell. Entitled Lavender it evokes the scent with a blue pot. She was developing cataracts when she painted it, perhaps explaining the importance of senses other than sight.

But Harriet Backer also broke the boundaries, becoming a key figure in the Norwegian art scene of her time. A member of the board of trustees and the acquisitions committee of the Norwegian National Gallery for twenty years, at the beginning of the 1890s she opened a painting school where she taught some of the most notable artists of the next generation, including Nikolai Astrup, Halfdan Egedius, and Helga Ring Reusch. This exhibition reflects one of the main principles of the Musée d’Orsay program: offering the opportunity to discover, alongside the work of the most emblematic figures, lesser-known artists who are essential to an understanding of the most significant artistic developments of the second half of the 19th century, the period the Musée d’Orsay specialises in. The Backer exhibition is on in Paris until January 12th and will head to the the Kode Bergen Art museum from February 21 until June 15, 2025. https://www.musee-orsay.fr/en https://www.kodebergen.no/en

©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette