A Harriet Backer Retrospective at the Musée d’Orsay

The Musée d’Orsay is proud to be the first non-Scandinavian institution to honor Harriet Backer, the Norwegian painter who created a modern synthesis of pleinairism and interior scenes. Curators Leïla Jarbouai and Estelle Bégué have selected seventy-four major works, almost…

The Musée d’Orsay is proud to be the first non-Scandinavian institution to honor Harriet Backer, the Norwegian painter who created a modern synthesis of pleinairism and interior scenes. Curators Leïla Jarbouai and Estelle Bégué have selected seventy-four major works, almost all of which are held in Norway — notably at the National Museum in Oslo — and are presented in a chronological and thematic sequence, sometimes accompanied by musical extracts composed by Backer’s sister Agathe Grøndahl. The exhibition thus focuses — somewhat repetitively — on the artist’s passion for music, her social circle, her landscapes and still lifes, to the unfortunate exclusion of the importance that literature and writing also played as sources of inspiration for Backer. It also struggles to pinpoint the origins, values and scope of “plein air en intérieur” (‘outdoor painting indoors’), that subtle oxymoron already analyzed by art historian Nils Ohlsen in Skandinavische Interieurmalerei zur Zeit Carl Larssons (Scandinavian Interior Painting in the Age of Carl Larsson) in 1999. Above all, the exhibition seeks to demonstrate the extent to which capturing the play of light — echoing music — was the artist’s lifelong objective. While most of the works produced during her training, in Munich and then Paris between 1874 and 1888, are characterized by a cold tone, something changes with Blue Interior, from 1883: a sensitive space with joyful colors. The rest of the exhibition shows how, on her return to Norway in 1888, Backer favored a light touch and a harmonious palette. The shimmering windows in her domestic and church interiors of the 1890s, which are bathed in diffused light, plunge us into spaces radiant with colorful rays. The last room, reserved for still lifes and interiors from the 1910s, proves just how insightful an artist Backer had become, and how much she had become the flower of the Norwegian soul: emotion is at its peak, like a little romantic music finally mastered.

Worth Seeing
“Harriet Backer (1845-1932). La musique des couleurs” 
“(Harriet Backer (1845-1932). The Music of Colors),” 
Musée d’Orsay, Paris VII.
Until January 11, 2025
musee-orsay.fr