Anna Maria Ehrenstrahl

Anna Maria Ehrenstrahl, as married "Wattrang", (1666-1729), was Swedish painter, the first female painter in her country. She was a baroque-artist and painted allegorys, portraits and group portraits in the style of the Baroque.

Biography

Born as child of the court painter David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl and Maria Momma, she was instructed as a student by her father to copy and finish his works and to paint details and other such smaller things to complete the paintings in his studio. She is confirmed as her fathers assistant from ca 1680. Her learning as an artist was therefore not complete, as he never intended her to become an independent artist, just as a form of artistic secretary in his studio, but she was in fact to create paintings herself eventually.

In 1688 she married Johan Wattrang, vice president in Svea Hovrätt, and painted six portraits of this courts former presidents, which she gave the court signed with her own name (1717). Her way of painting was in the same barocque style as her father; she painted allergorys and portraits of both single people and groups, bot real people and mytholocigal figures in the style of the time. Among them was portraits of king Charles XI of Sweden, Prince Ulrik (in 1685), an allegory over the four seasons (1687) and an allegory of Cupid and Psyche. She painted the four king's under her lifetime, the Princes Gustaf and Fredrik, Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark and Aurora Königsmarck.

She belonged to the circle around the salonist and poet Sophia Elisabet Brenner, who wrote her a phoem inspired by her works:

If I of inborn instinct rimes for my pleasure,Your inclination is made clear by your work.

Though art may sometimes cost us hours,There is no better way to be remembered by.

Let envy grine against us, let death tense his bow,For neither scare your pencil, nor my pen.

See also

* Ulrika Pasch
* Anna Maria Thelott

References

* http://runeberg.org/sqvinnor/0147.html
* Österberg, Carin et al., Svenska kvinnor: föregångare, nyskapare. Lund: Signum 1990. (ISBN 91-87896-03-6)
* "Svenskt Konstnärslexikon", Allhems Förlag, Malmö.