The Farewell
Harriet Backer·1878
Historical Context
Painted in 1878, 'The Farewell' is among the earliest significant works of Harriet Backer's career, produced in the year she arrived in Paris to study. The farewell scene — emotionally charged, socially significant, narratively suggestive — was a popular subject in nineteenth-century European genre painting, reflecting the widespread experience of emigration, travel, and separation that characterised the era. For Norway specifically, farewell scenes carried particular resonance: Norwegian emigration to America accelerated dramatically from the 1880s, and the goodbye at the door or harbour was a lived reality for many families. Backer's engagement with the subject at the very outset of her professional career may reflect both the emotional reality of her own departure from Norway and the genre conventions she was simultaneously studying.
Technical Analysis
The early date reveals German academic training influences in the figure handling and compositional arrangement, with stronger reliance on outline and local colour than in Backer's mature Naturalist works.
Look Closer
- ◆The 1878 date places this at the very beginning of Backer's professional career, before Paris training had transformed
- ◆German academic influences from her Munich studies are visible in the firmer outlines and local colour approach, soon
- ◆The farewell gesture — a moment of suspension between arrival and departure — captures the emotional charge of
- ◆The interior setting allows Backer to begin exploring the domestic architecture that would become her signature subject
