Margareta Alströmer

Margareta Hedvig Alströmer, as married Cronstedt af Fullerö, (12 December 1763 – 19 February 1816), was a Swedish painter, singer and countess. She was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts and of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.[1]

Biography

Margareta Alströmer was born the child of the baron, statesman and amateur musician Patrick Alströmer and Christina Maria Ollonberg, and the granddaughter of Jonas Alströmer. She was raised in a very cultural environment. Her father had made their home a center of the cultural life in the city of Gothenburg and was known as the founder of the theatre Comediehuset (1779). She and her sisters Cristina and Anna, and her brother Jonas, often participated as singers, musicians and actors in concerts and amateur theatre in Gothenburg and Stockholm.

Alströmer was described as a "skillful dilettante in the art of painting" and was elected as a member of the Academy of Arts by a large majority in 1795. She was also a popular dilettante singer at private concerts and public charity concerts, and in the same year, she was elected to the Academy of Music, a first for her combined sex and status; previously, only women who were professional artists had been elected, such as Elisabeth Olin in 1782, but in 1795, Alströmer was elected with Christina Fredenheim (1762–1841) and Anna Brita Wendelius (1741–1804), followed in 1801 by the siblings Sophia (1773–1858) and Emilie (1780–1863) Brandel, Ulrica Bouck and Marie Antoinette Petersén (1771–1855), all dilettantes. In the Academy of Arts, Wendela Gustafva Sparre (1772–1855), another noble dilettante artist, was elected in to the academy in 1797. In 1799, Alströmer participated in a concert in Stockholm playing the Clavichord to the singing of Christoffer Christian Karsten, Marianne Ehrenström and Christina Fredenheim.

In 1781, she married Major General Count Nils August Cronstedt af Fullerö. In 1788, her husband was sentenced to be shot for subordination, but was instead imprisoned in the fortress of Varberg, from where he was released in 1792 by order of Duke Charles.

References

  1. ↑ Anna Ivarsdotter Johnsson and Leif Jonsson: Musiken i Sverige, Frihetstiden och Gustaviansk tid 1720-1810.
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