Marie Helene Aarestrup (1826–1919) was a Norwegian artist who specialized in

genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...

and portrait painting. A fine example of her work is a portrait of the Swedish singer

Kristina Nilsson Christina Nilsson, Countess de Casa Miranda, also called Christine Nilsson (20 August 1843 – 22 November 1921) was a Swedish dramatic coloratura soprano. Possessed of a pure and brilliant voice of first three then two and a half octaves trai ...

which she exhibited in 1865 at the

Paris Salon The Salon (french: Salon), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art ...

. In later life she painted animals, especially horses.

Biography

Born in

Flekkefjord is a municipality in Agder county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Lister. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Flekkefjord. The villages of Sira, Gyland, Rasvåg, Kirkehavn, and Åna-Sira are lo ...

in south-western Norway on 27 May 1826, Marie Aarestrup was the daughter of the jurist Peter Nicolai Aarestrup and Sara Haasted. After studying drawing at Hans Reusch's school in

Bergen Bergen (), historically Bjørgvin, is a city and municipality in Vestland county on the west coast of Norway. , its population is roughly 285,900. Bergen is the second-largest city in Norway. The municipality covers and is on the peninsula of ...

, she continued her training in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

(1843-44). From 1859 to 1863, she studied under Jean-Baptiste-Ange Tissier in Paris, after which she spent six months in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in th ...

as a student of Benjamin Vautier. In later life, she was mainly in England and Poland before finally settling in Paris in the 1890s. After a rough period in

in the mid-1860s when she had trouble making ends meet, she spent the rest of her life abroad, working both as a teacher and a painter. From the 1870s, when she was in Poland, she became interested in painting animals, especially horses. Marie Aarestrup died in Paris on 9 June 1919.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aarestrup, Marie 1826 births 1919 deaths 19th-century Norwegian painters 20th-century Norwegian painters People from Flekkefjord Norwegian women painters 19th-century Norwegian women artists 20th-century Norwegian women artists Norwegian expatriates in France