Portrait of the Painter Kitty L. Kielland

Harriet Backer painted this portrait of her close friend and fellow artist Kitty L. Kielland in 1883, during the years both women were studying and working in Paris — one of the most significant periods of artistic friendship in Norwegian art history. Backer and Kielland were among the small number of Norwegian women who made the journey to Paris for serious artistic training in this period, studying at the ateliers open to women students (the École des Beaux-Arts remained closed to women until 1897). Their friendship, sustained throughout their lives, produced multiple artistic exchanges and cross-references, including this portrait and Kielland's later portrait of Backer. The choice to paint a fellow artist — another serious professional woman — rather than a conventional female model signals Backer's interest in women as intellectual peers. Kielland, who would become known for her atmospheric Jæren peat bog landscapes, is here presented not as landscape painter but as individual presence. The portrait is now at the National Museum in Oslo, appropriate placement for a work documenting two of Norway's most significant women artists.

The 1883 Paris date gives the portrait a technical context: Backer was absorbing lessons from Léon Bonnat and the broader Parisian naturalist tradition, and the portrait likely shows the careful academic modelling, limited palette, and psychological seriousness characteristic of that training. The face receives the most resolved handling, with looser treatment of the clothing and background consistent with Parisian plein-air influenced approaches.