Magdalene Bärens

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Magdalene Margrethe Bärens, née Schäffer, (1737-1808), was a Danish artist. She was one of the first professional female artists in Denmark, and the first woman to be elected into the Danish Academy of Arts. She was a flower-and still-life painter.

[edit] Biography

Born as the child of overberider Johann Hermann Schäffer at the Royal Stables, who was a respected expert about horses, she early showed talent in drawing, and her father, who assisted the sculptor Jacques-François-Joseph Saly in illustrating the anatomy of horses, encourriged this, while her mother was very negative about her becoming anything else than a wife. After her marriage in 1761, she stopped all artistic activity, but later started with it again encourriaged by the painter Vigilius Erichsen. In 1779, her paintings of flowers in gouache where displayed for the Academy by a professor, and in 1780, she became the first woman to be elcted to the academy.

Bärens painted still-life paintings, especially flowers, and was appointed royal flower-painter by dowager queen Juliana Maria. To paint them in winter, she installed a green house. In 1783 she sent two paintings to Catherine the Great of Russia and was revorded with a gold medal and 300 speciedukater. In 1788-1790 she visited England and was much admired, but the import-laws stopped any success she could have had there. In Denmark, she unsuccessfully applied to the academy in 1795 for a vacant position there, and in 1796 for a residence at Charlottenborg. As a widow in 1802, she was given a pension.