The Painted Home as Heritage: Fanny Brate and the Home at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

SummaryThis article brings attention to the Swedish painter Fanny Brate’s paintings of domestic and family scenes from the turn of the nineteenth century. Brate is an artist who has been both marginalised by art history writing and museum curating and the creator of a body of work that has engrained a Swedish psyche. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, her art has resurfaced on the art market and museum walls. Brate’s paintings capture a key moment in cultural history and heritage: the Swedish home with a light blond décor and blissful family life. In this article, Brate’s work and its reception over the twentieth century is compared to her contemporary Carl Larsson's related painterly themes, a comparison which unravels values and politics that have caused her relative marginalisation. What is of interest in this article is how representations of domestic environments have different receptions partly due to the gender of the artist and further, how this theme can cast some light on the complex relationship between canon formation and cultural heritage processes.