NIVA, DENMARK.- Nivaagaards Malerisamling is expanding the story told by its 19th-century galleries with the addition of two works by women artists whose careers unfolded at a time when access to professional artistic life was still sharply limited by gender.
Beginning September 19, 2026, the museum will present newly acquired paintings by Bolette Puggaard and Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann in a focused display within its permanent collection. The works, Italian Landscape by Puggaard and Portrait of Margrethe Lehmann, painted around 1853 by Jerichau Baumann, have recently undergone conservation and will be shown at the museum for the first time.
Their arrival marks an important step for a collection that has been working to strengthen the representation of women artists in its historic holdings. In 2025, Nivaagaards Malerisamling acquired Artemisia Gentileschi’s Susanna and the Elders and a pair of flower paintings by the Flemish artist Catharina Ykens II, bringing the number of pre-18th-century works by women in the collection to five. The museum already owned paintings by Sofonisba and Europa Anguissola, although founder Johannes Hage did not know the identities of their makers when he acquired them.
The two new acquisitions now extend that effort into the museum’s Danish 19th-century holdings, where women painters have historically been far less visible.
The story behind the works is closely intertwined with the family history of Nivaagaards Malerisamling itself. Bolette Puggaard, ne Hage, was the aunt of museum founder Johannes Hage. Born in 1798 into a merchant family in Stege on the island of Mn, she married businessman Hans Puggaard in 1816. Their home became a gathering place for artists, politicians and cultural figures, and Bolette pursued art herself, receiving private instruction from the influential painter C.W. Eckersberg in 1830.
Puggaard and her husband traveled repeatedly to Italy and spent time in Rome, where their household became part of the Danish artistic community abroad. The landscape of Rome and the surrounding countryside became a recurring source of inspiration for her, particularly the Roman Campagna. Her newly acquired Italian Landscape offers a direct link to that period of artistic exchange and travel.
The second painting, Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann’s Portrait of Margrethe Lehmann, adds another layer to the family narrative.
Margrethe Lehmann was Puggaard’s granddaughter and the daughter of Marie and Orla Lehmann. Jerichau Baumann portrays the seven-year-old girl in a landscape, dressed in pale pink, with flushed cheeks and bright blue eyes turned away from the viewer. The image balances formality with a sense of childhood reserve, capturing what the museum describes as both innocence and shyness.
Margrethe’s family was deeply involved in both political and cultural life. Her father, Orla Lehmann, was a leading National Liberal politician and one of the figures associated with the introduction of Denmark’s Constitution and parliamentary democracy. He was also an active art collector, commissioning works and maintaining friendships with major Danish artists including Wilhelm Marstrand, P.C. Skovgaard and Constantin Hansen.
After Margrethe’s mother died of tuberculosis at the age of 28, Orla Lehmann raised Margrethe as a single father. She later became a journalist and critic and emerged as an outspoken advocate for women’s rights in Norway. Her life eventually connected the artistic and political networks of 19th-century Denmark with a broader Scandinavian history of social reform.
Jerichau Baumann’s own career was similarly shaped by the tension between opportunity and exclusion. Born in 1819, the Polish-Danish painter trained at the Dsseldorf School in Germany before moving to Rome, where she met the Danish sculptor Jens Adolf Jerichau. The couple married and settled in Denmark in 1849.
Although Jerichau Baumann achieved significant international recognition and became a sought-after portrait painter, she often found herself at odds with the dominant currents of Danish art. Her famous 1851 painting Mother Denmark became an enduring national image, yet much of her work looked beyond Denmark. She traveled extensively and was among the relatively few European artists granted access to harems in Turkey and Egypt, where she developed subjects centered on women and the female body.
Seen together, the works by Puggaard and Jerichau Baumann broaden the museum’s account of the Danish 19th century. They also reflect the social conditions under which women artists worked: private lessons instead of formal academy access, careers shaped by family and patronage networks, and recognition that could be uneven even for artists with international reputations.
The museum notes that patronage was crucial to artistic life during the period, and the Puggaard family itself played an important role in supporting artists and creating spaces where art, politics and intellectual life could intersect.
Both paintings were acquired from heirs of the Puggaard family along with several other works, all of which will be included in the new focused presentation beginning September 19. Their restoration was supported by the Hoffmann and Husmans Foundation.
For Nivaagaards Malerisamling, the acquisitions do more than add two names to the walls. They place women more visibly within a 19th-century story that has often been told through male artists, while revealing how artistic, political and family histories were closely connected in Denmark during a period of profound social change.
