Blue interior with the painter Annette Anker

Painted in 1883, this interior depicting the painter Annette Anker connects Kitty Kielland's domestic interior work to the broader world of Norwegian women artists' collaborative professional networks in the late nineteenth century. Annette Anker was a Norwegian woman painter who, like Kielland, had studied in Germany and Paris, and who formed part of the close community of women artists working in Kristiania. The choice to paint a fellow artist in an interior setting creates a layered image: the sitter is herself a professional observer of the visual world, making her the subject of a painting by a peer rather than a patron. The painting's blue interior tonality links it to Harriet Backer's celebrated 'Blue Interior' of the same year, suggesting that both women were experimenting with the same chromatic approach to interior space — likely in dialogue with each other, given their close personal friendship.

The blue tonality characteristic of this interior reflects the influence of natural window light on blue-painted walls or fabrics, creating the cool, reflective atmosphere that both Kielland and Backer explored in the early 1880s.