Harriet Backer. Every Atom is Colour

Harriet Backer (1845–1932) was one of Norways most significant artists. Highly acclaimed for her rich, luminous use of color, Backer created an eminently personal style that blends interior scenes and open-air painting.

She drew inspiration from the realist movement as well as from the innovations of Impressionism, with free brushstrokes and meticulous attention to variations in light. She is also famous for her tender portraits of rural life and her interest in church interiors.

Backer’s early ambition was to become a portrait painter. Although today she is best known for her interiors and landscapes, she continued to paint portraits throughout her career. A number of these can be seen in the exhibition, including her only self-portrait.

Private spaces

While Backer's painting evolved greatly in stylistic terms over the course of her long career, she stayed true to a limited number of subjects, and motif studies were an integral part of her work throughout.

She was deeply interested in colour, light, and the interiors she painted. In addition, as a portrait painter, it was important for her to know the people who sat for her. Many of her subjects were friends, whom she painted in familiar surroundings, but she also depicted people from very different social circles.

The exhibition turns to the artist's preferred themes: rustic interiors, paintings of traditional Norwegian churches, landscapes, and her very particular approach to still-life painting.

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 Grøndhal, was a famous musician in Norway and one of the main subjects of her paintings, where musical notes sing through the resonant brushstrokes.

Role model for a new generation

When seeking to establish herself as an artist, Backer approached the domination of the art world by men as a challenge. In an era when women were not considered to be full citizens in Norway, she broke the boundaries, becoming a key figure in the art scene of her time.

As a champion of women’s rights, she distinguished herself more by what she did than what she said, and many were highly appreciative of the paths she opened in the fields of art and social development.

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. She received the support of collector Rasmus Meyer, also a great patron of Edvard Munch.

About the exhibition

The exhibition is a collaboration between Kode Bergen Art Museum and the National Museum, and is supported by Sparebankstiftelsen DNB, Bergesenstiftelsen, H. Westfal-Larsen and hustru Anna Westfal-Larsens Almennyttige Fond, Yvonne og Bjarne Rieber, and Ragnhild Willumsen Grieg and Per Grieg Jr.

It will be shown at the National Museum in autumn 2023, before travelling on to Nationalmuseum in Stockholm and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in 2024. The exhibition’s final stop is Kode in Bergen in spring 2025.