Breakfast Time

In the summer of 1887 Hanna Hirsch set up her easel in her family's garden in the Stockholm archipelago and painted the breakfast table: white cloth, glinting glass, a coffee pot, the light coming down through the leaves. She was in her early twenties, freshly back from studying in Paris, and she brought its lessons home. Paint is laid on thick in separate strokes, sunlight and shadow built from patches of pure colour rather than smooth blending. Swedish critics were annoyed. That loose, dabbed handling looked unfinished to them. The picture became her breakthrough anyway, and today it is one of the Nationalmuseum's best-loved works. She made it before she married the painter Georg Pauli and took his name.