<b>Anna Petersen</b>
(1845 - 1910)
 

Anna Sophie Petersen was a Danish painter. Although she showed some promise as an artist, specifically in genre painting, she struggled to find a place in the male-dominated Danish art world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her work fell out of fashion and she was largely forgotten until the end of the 20th century when the Hirschsprung Collection and Statens Museum for Kunst acquired some of her more important works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Petersen

Breton Girl Looking After Plants in the Hothouse
1884
Oil on canvas
110 x 121 cm
SMK, Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

 

In Anna Petersen’s day women were not allowed to vote, nor to enrol at the Academy of Fine Arts. The artist has shown this woman engaged in thought rather than labour, thereby manifesting how women are independent, thinking beings in their own right.