Little Red Riding Hood

This 1872 canvas is an early work by Harriet Backer, painted when she was twenty-four years old and still in the initial phase of her training before her extended period in Munich and Paris. The subject — Little Red Riding Hood — draws on the fairy-tale tradition revived throughout nineteenth-century Europe, particularly in the context of Romantic nationalism's interest in folklore as authentic cultural inheritance. Backer would have known the Grimm brothers' collected version as well as the earlier Perrault text, and fairy-tale subjects were frequently treated in Norwegian and Scandinavian painting as vehicles for exploring childhood, forest landscape, and the boundary between safety and danger. The 1872 date places this work well before Backer's mature Impressionist period; it represents her early academic style, likely closer to the detailed, illustrative approach of Norwegian Realism than to the later chromatic experimentation. The National Museum in Oslo holds this early canvas alongside Backer's later, fully matured work, providing a useful point of comparison for understanding her artistic development.

The 1872 date suggests academic painting technique acquired through early Norwegian training rather than the more advanced Munich or Parisian methods Backer would later absorb. The fairy-tale subject demands careful attention to the forest setting, the small figure of the girl, and the characteristic red cape that gives the story its visual identity. The handling is likely careful and illustrative, with clear figure-ground relationships appropriate to the narrative subject.