Harriet Backer (21 January 1845,
Holmestrandis a city and municipality in Vestfold county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Holmestrad. The city was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 . The neighboring rural municipality of Botne was merged into the municipality of Holmestrand on 1 January...
— 25 March 1932,
Oslois the capital and largest city in Norway. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the town was largely destroyed by a fire in 1624. The Danish–Norwegian king Christian IV rebuilt the city as Christiania . Oslo, then an alternative name, became official again in 1925...
) was a
NorwegianNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
painterPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
who achieved recognition in her own time and was a pioneer among female artists both in the
Nordic countriesThe Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories which include the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland...
and in
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
generally.
Backer was born to an affluent family in
Holmestrandis a city and municipality in Vestfold county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Holmestrad. The city was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 . The neighboring rural municipality of Botne was merged into the municipality of Holmestrand on 1 January...
. At 12, she moved with her family to
ChristianiaChristiania may refer to:* Christiania or Kristiania, names of Oslo * Christiania Township, Jackson County, Minnesota* Christiania Township, Burleigh County, North Dakota* Freetown Christiania, neighborhood of Copenhagen, Denmark...
(now
Oslois the capital and largest city in Norway. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the town was largely destroyed by a fire in 1624. The Danish–Norwegian king Christian IV rebuilt the city as Christiania . Oslo, then an alternative name, became official again in 1925...
) where she took lessons in
drawingDrawing is a visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, chalk, pastels, markers, stylus, or various metals like silverpoint...
and
paintingPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
, notably with Joachim Calmeyer and Johan Fredrik Eckersberg.
Harriet Backer (21 January 1845,
Holmestrandis a city and municipality in Vestfold county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Holmestrad. The city was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 . The neighboring rural municipality of Botne was merged into the municipality of Holmestrand on 1 January...
— 25 March 1932,
Oslois the capital and largest city in Norway. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the town was largely destroyed by a fire in 1624. The Danish–Norwegian king Christian IV rebuilt the city as Christiania . Oslo, then an alternative name, became official again in 1925...
) was a
NorwegianNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
painterPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
who achieved recognition in her own time and was a pioneer among female artists both in the
Nordic countriesThe Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories which include the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland...
and in
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus Mountains , and the Black Sea to the southeast...
generally.
Backer was born to an affluent family in
Holmestrandis a city and municipality in Vestfold county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the city of Holmestrad. The city was established as a municipality on 1 January 1838 . The neighboring rural municipality of Botne was merged into the municipality of Holmestrand on 1 January...
. At 12, she moved with her family to
ChristianiaChristiania may refer to:* Christiania or Kristiania, names of Oslo * Christiania Township, Jackson County, Minnesota* Christiania Township, Burleigh County, North Dakota* Freetown Christiania, neighborhood of Copenhagen, Denmark...
(now
Oslois the capital and largest city in Norway. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the town was largely destroyed by a fire in 1624. The Danish–Norwegian king Christian IV rebuilt the city as Christiania . Oslo, then an alternative name, became official again in 1925...
) where she took lessons in
drawingDrawing is a visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, chalk, pastels, markers, stylus, or various metals like silverpoint...
and
paintingPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete...
, notably with Joachim Calmeyer and Johan Fredrik Eckersberg. She traveled extensively throughout Europe as a companion to her sister, the pianist Agathe Backer-Grøndahl, and she took further lessons in the course of these trips. She studied in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and
MunichMunich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg...
, and was influenced by
impressionismImpressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s...
, though her work is mostly classified as
realistRealism in the visual arts and literature is the depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life, without embellishment or interpretation...
. She never belonged to any school but her work is often compared with that of her friend
Eilif PeterssenHjalmar Eilif Emmanuel Peterssen was a Norwegian painter.He attended the of Fredrik Eckersberg in Kristiania in 1866 and 1870. After that, he studied painting briefly with Knud Bergslien at the Johan Fredrick Eckersberg School of Painting and left to go abroad in 1871...
. She gave lessons to the novelist
Cora SandelCora Sandel, née Sara Cecilie Margareta Gjorwell Fabricius was a Norwegian writer who lived most of her life abroad, in France and Sweden....
.