From 24 September 2024 to 11 January 2025, the Musée d’Orsay presents the exhibition “Harriet Backer. Every Atom is Colour”
Supply: The Nationwide Museum of Norway · Picture: Harriet Backer, «Night, Inside», 1896. Picture: Nasjonalmuseet / Børre Høstland
Harriet Backer (1845-1932) was a number one artist in her lifetime, occupying a central place within the Scandinavian artwork world, regardless of gender. Each Atom is Color will place Backer’s life and work in a time when society and ladies’s rights have been present process radical change all through Europe.
A distinguished colourist with a sense for gentle and ambiance, she additionally established herself amongst artists overseas. The 15 years she spent in Munich and Paris have been a turning level in her growth. Arriving in Paris in 1878, she enrolled in Madame Trélat de Vigny’s atelier, the place she met different ladies artists – together with the Swedish painter Hildegard Thorell (1850-1930). Backer’s colleague and shut good friend from Münich, the Norwegian panorama painter Kitty Kielland (1843–1914), accompanied her to Paris the place they shared an residence within the metropolis collectively for ten years.
Backer noticed the male-dominated artwork world as a problem, although she tended towards actions moderately than phrases. In 1888, she established a famend college for painters in Oslo, which she ran till 1909. Many vital artists akin to Nikolai Astrup, Harald Sohlberg, Charlotte Wankel, Halfdan Egedius and Astrid Welhaven attended Backers college.
She additionally participated within the 1889 and 1900 Expositions Universelles, incomes a silver medal in 1889 and thru her positions on buying committees and exhibition juries, she performed a considerable function in establishing equality and professionalism within the Norwegian artwork world which remains to be obvious immediately.
