A selection from Nationalmuseum´s collections

The Nationalmuseum's collections contain many works by women artists, mostly from the 1800s. The women artists are often presented as solitaires, as remarkable exceptions in both art history and museum collections. In the Western tradition there have always been women artists, but during the 1900s they were omitted intentionally in traditional art history. In the 1800s there were over a thousand Swedish women artists who were active in many fields within the arts. They were privileged compared to their European sisters, since they had access to academic education. The “Female Section” at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm was opened in 1864. The working women took and got a lot of space in the public art scene. They changed the perception of both the role of the artist and the bourgeois family life. Thereby they upset the male artist norm. In the 1890s there was a backlash.

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