La regina Bianca di Namur

This was the picture that made the young Finn Albert Edelfelt's name. He sent it to the Paris Salon of 1877, it was accepted, and cheap reproductions of it soon hung in homes across France, Sweden and Finland. It shows a medieval scene, Queen Blanche of Namur bouncing her small son Haakon on her knee. Nordic viewers recognised it at once, because it pictures an old nursery rhyme, Rida, rida, ranka, sung while jogging a child on the lap. Edelfelt was barely 23 and studying in Paris when he painted it, reaching back to Nordic history for a subject his French teachers had taught him to stage like a proper history painting. The rhyme he chose is still sung to small children across the Nordic countries today.