The Altar at Tanum Church in Bærum

Harriet Backer painted the altar of Tanum Church in Bærum in 1891, two years after completing her celebrated 'Christening in Tanum Church,' which had earned her enormous critical acclaim in Norway. Backer had a sustained artistic relationship with this medieval stone church in Akershus county, returning repeatedly to capture its interior under varying conditions of light. Her church paintings belong to a broader Scandinavian interest in sacred vernacular architecture, but Backer uniquely subordinated doctrinal symbolism to the play of light on whitewashed walls and carved wooden fixtures. By 1891 she had absorbed the lessons of her Paris years under Léon Bonnat and through close study of the French Naturalist circle, particularly Jules Bastien-Lepage's attention to diffused natural light. The Norwegian art establishment received her church interiors as national cultural documents as much as paintings, since Tanum's medieval origins made it a site of historical resonance.

Backer built the composition around the contrast between the warm golden tones of the carved wooden altar and the cool, whitewashed stone walls. Light enters laterally, casting soft gradations across pew-ends and floor.