Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann

Anna Maria Elisabeth Lisinska Jerichau-Baumann (November 21, 1819 – July 11, 1881) was a Polish-Danish painter. She was married to the sculptor Jens Adolf Jerichau. Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann was born in Żoliborz a borough of Warsaw. Her father Philip Adolph Baumann, a mapmaker, and her mother, Johanne Frederikke Reyer (1790–1854), were German. At the age of nineteen, she began her studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf which at the time was one of the most important art centres in Europe and her early subject matter was drawn from Slovak life. She is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. She began exhibiting there and in 1844 attracted public attention for the first time. After she moved to Rome, her paintings were primarily of local life. When Baumann was not travelling, she spent many hours a day in her studio in Rome. She was particularly fond of the Italian painters. Baumann had great success abroad, however, and had a special following in France where she was twice represented at the World Fair in Paris, first in 1867 and again in 1878. In 1852 she exhibited some of her paintings in London, and Queen Victoria requested a private presentation in Buckingham Palace. Among the portraits presented to the Queen was her painting of Hans Christian Andersen, completed in 1850. In 1869–1870 Baumann traveled extensively in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle-East, and again in 1874–1875 accompanied by her son Harald. She was able to gain access to the harems of the Ottoman Empire and as a result was able to paint scenes of harem life from personal observation, in contrast to most artists of the time, whose work on this popular subject was entirely derived from the imagination or other artists in the same position as themselves. Baumann had to curb her desire to paint the women of the harems as Europeans liked to imagine them because they insisted on being painted in the latest Paris fashions.In 1869, she was admitted into the harem of Mustafa Fazil Paşa. She was able to gain entry because of her royal patronage in Denmark and brought with her a letter of introduction from Princess Alexandra of Denmark by then the Princess of Wales. The princess had accompanied her husband (the future Edward VII) on a grand tour which included the Ottoman Empire, earlier that year, and therefore had great influence. But the fact that Mustafa was a liberal in favour of a Western style constitutional government and was a vocal proponent of modernization played an important part in her being granted entry. She was entranced by Mustafa Paşa's daughter Nazlı and wrote home to her husband and children, 'Yesterday I fell in love with a beautiful Turkish Princess'. Her work from this period is sometimes decorative and frequently sentimental but with a fine sense of colour and lighting. The sensualism in some of these paintings was still considered taboo in some parts of Europe and the Danish art world tried to keep these works out of sight. Until recently, her paintings were kept in museum storerooms in Denmark. The erotic quality in many of her husband's statues may have helped her to disregard this provincialism in spite of the obvious social risks to a woman at the time.