Exhibition about the Norwegian artist Harriet Backer opens at Nationalmuseum 22 February

In spring and summer 2024, Nationalmuseum will be hosting an exhibition on Harriet Backer who was one of Norway’s most influential artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Backer was one of the most prominent colourists in Scandinavia and portrayers of light and atmosphere in interiors. The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the National Museum in Oslo, Kode in Bergen, Musée d’Orsay in Paris and Nationalmuseum in Stockholm.

Harriet Backer (1845–1932) was a pioneer on many levels and the exhibition highlights the innovative qualities of her art, as well as her central position in the Norwegian art scene at the turn of the twentieth century. How did she become such a prominent figure in Norwegian art? Why did a whole generation of young painters, men and women alike, choose to become her pupils and successors?

The fifty years of Harriet Backer’s career saw radical changes in Norwegian society and in women’s rights and career opportunities. She established herself as an artist on a cosmopolitan art scene, spending fifteen years abroad. First, she resided in Munich, thereafter in Paris, before returning to her home country as a mature artist.

Backer’s main inspiration in France was impressionism and the paintings by Claude Monet. Like Monet, she was an exceptional colourist and a skilled portrayer of light.

Backer was a meticulous observer of the world surrounding her and she portrayed sensitively the many rooms of her time and those who inhabited them. Her subject matters range from the middle-class home to the everyday life of bourgeois women, from peasants' interiors and rural life to the church as a space for spiritual experience and rituals, as well as the room of her own as a place for artistic creation, music and creative community.

In the years around 1900, Harriet Backer established herself as an influential figure on the Norwegian art scene. She participated in exhibition juries and acquisitions committees and ran an art school. A whole generation of Norwegian artists were her students and followers. Backer was early on perceived as one of Norway's leading painters. Unlike many female artists, she has never been devalued in art historiography. In 1925, the last time Backer exhibited in Stockholm, critics unanimously described her as “the greatest Nordic woman painter”.

The exhibition Harriet Backer contains some 80 works, including loans from the National Museum in Oslo, Kode in Bergen and other public and private collections. The exhibition was showed at the National Museum in Oslo in autumn 2023 where it attracted over 100 000 visitors. At Nationalmuseum in Stockholm it will be on show 22 February to 18 August 2024, at Musée d’Orsay in Paris in autumn 2024 and at Kode in Bergen in spring 2025. The curator of the show at Nationalmuseum is Carina Rech.

A catalogue containing a series of in-depth articles is available to coincide with the exhibition.

Franco–Nordic collaboration

The exhibition Harriet Backer has been initiated by The National Museum, Oslo and Kode Bergen Art Museum, and organized in collaboration with Nationalmuseum Stockholm and Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

The exhibition is supported by the Savings Bank Foundation DNB, The Bergesen Foundation and H. Westfal-Larsen og Hustru Anna Westfal-Larsens Almennyttige Fond.

Harriet Backer is on show on the top floor of Nationalmuseum from 22 February –18 August 2024.

The exhibition “Design = Memory, Akira Minagawa and Minä perhonen” opens at the same day at Nationalmuseum.

More information

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