STOCKHOLM.- This summer, Nationalmuseum will be presenting the first monographic exhibition on Hanna Hirsch Pauli. It will provide a comprehensive overview of her long life as an artist, including her most famous paintings and works that have never been exhibited before. In Hanna Hirsch Pauli – The Art of Being Free, her art is exhibited in its own right for the first time.


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Hanna Hirsch Pauli is one of the most popular and well-known of the Swedish artists who were active at the turn of the 20th century. When she broke through as an artist in the 1880s, her style of painting was regarded as radical and innovative in terms of both choice of subject and stylistic execution. She painted iconic works such as The Artist Venny Soldan-Brofeldt and Breakfast Time. She was neither marginalised during her lifetime nor forgotten after her death. Yet much of her output is unknown to a wider audience, and her fascinating life story has remained largely unexplored.


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The exhibition features more than 130 works that were created over six decades, during a long and intense life as an artist. It follows Hanna Hirsch Pauli’s personal and artistic development from her upbringing in an upper middle class Jewish family and her education at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, to liberating years of study in Paris, marriage, children and her establishment as a portrait painter in turn-of-the-century Stockholm, and, finally, late self-portraits created in the 1920s and 30s in which the artist explores her place in life during turbulent and increasingly threatening times. The exhibition is based on new research and newly discovered archival material. It is the first monographic exhibition and the most comprehensive presentation ever of the work of Hanna Hirsch Pauli. Paintings, drawings and sketches are complemented by a selection of works by her contemporaries such as her husband Georg Pauli, Carl Larsson, Richard Bergh, Eva Bonnier, Ernst Josephson and Fanny Brate.

“It’s fantastic that we're focusing on a comprehensive and research-based exhibition on Hanna Hirsch Pauli here at Nationalmuseum. Many of the paintings are on loan from Hirsch Pauli’s relatives and other private collections, and have never or very rarely been shown publicly. Many works have undergone conservation by Nationalmuseum conservators over the past six months as part of a substantial restoration campaign to ensure that this important cultural heritage will be preserved for a long time to come,” says Carina Rech, curator of the exhibition.

This exhibition is the result of a research project spanning several years which is based on sensational archival discoveries: the artist’s extensive correspondence, photo albums and working materials in the form of sketchbooks and drawings. This unique archival material, which has never before been available for research, allows us to get closer to Hanna Hirsch Pauli as both a person and an artist than has previously been possible. She talks about her paintings, her working process and her artistic vision. She discusses the big issues of life, love, friendship and the role of women in society. She reflects on Jewish identity, anti-Semitism, Nazism and political and societal developments. The rich source material reveals Hanna Hirsch Pauli to be a charismatic and strong-willed person, a headstrong artist who followed her own path. The exhibition paints an intimate portrait of one of Sweden’s most significant artists who was never on the fringes of Swedish cultural life, but right at the centre.

The exhibition is complemented by a richly illustrated, research-based catalogue that provides a representative overview of Hanna Hirsch Pauli’s artistic output. Multi-award-winning Swedish cartoonist Joanna Rubin Dranger has contributed an illustrated letter story that will also be made available as in-depth material for schools.

The exhibition Hanna Hirsch Pauli – The Art of Being Free will be on display on the upper floor of Nationalmuseum from 19 June 2025 to 11 January 2026.

Exhibition curator: Carina Rech, Nationalmuseum

Exhibition designer: Sara Al Adhami, Nationalmuseum


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