ESSA Stockholm: Harriet Backer

 

Harriet Backer was born in 1845 and quickly rose to prominence in the art world. Her international art studies led her to such cultural centers as Munich and Paris, where she learned from the Impressionists. She took from them the principles of the importance of light, the emotion of color, and the practice of plein-air painting. However, she did not entirely adopt their ways of painting. As you can see in her painting Christening in Tanum Church, which she regarded as her principal work, she held on to many traditions of realist painting and used them to depict numerous figures in varying scenes. (Museum plaque, pic 3) One motif that came up again and again in her work was showing women in domestic settings lit by a light source from outside the scene.

She painted women from different social classes, but a common theme is that they are depicted without allegory. The women don’t usually pose and they aren’t meant to be characters from any historical or mythical story. They are simply shown reading, playing the piano, hanging laundry in a windy field, or simply existing in their own world as the figures in their own story. They are often lit with natural lighting coming into their interior spaces through a narrow window, which perhaps is a critique of the limited possibilities of women in domestic settings, and yet they persevere and, through Backer, tell their own stories.

Backer depicted women from a variety of classes from a perspective that few men were willing to understand in a unique style that emphasized both the quality of light and color as well as the reality of her scenes all in accordance with accepted artistic tradition. This combo made her a feminist powerhouse. By taking inspiration from the more radical Impressionists, she made her art unique, and by keeping one foot firmly in academic tradition, she made it difficult to be easily dismissed. This is why she is so beloved among Nordic communities and this is why she had such an exhibit in the Swedish National Museum.

As to her commemoration, it is a little difficult to say if it was done well or not. Part of me wants to say that there was no statue of her, no street named after her, nor any other public memorial to her, so she won’t be kept in the public memory and was commemorated poorly. Another part of me wants to say that she had a wing of her own in the Swedish National Museum, so she’s been commemorated pretty well. Ultimately, the latter wins out, particularly because there were enough examples of her artwork and enough supplemental information about her life that I think the exhibit honored not just her art but her personality as well. It commemorated not just her deeds but her being as well--a good commemoration in my book.