1000 Museums

Elisabeth Baumann started her career studying painting at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, and as a member of the Dusseldorf school of painting her work is considered an example of the German Romantic style. While living in Copenhagen with her husband Jens Adolf Jerichau, a sculptor and professor at the Danish Royal Academy of Arts, she was awarded both the Academy’s Jubilee Medal and its membership. In the following decades, her work traveled through Europe and she was represented at the World’s Fair in Paris both in 1867 and 1878. She also exhibited in London and gained the favor of Queen Victoria. She is especially known for her paintings of harems, because unlike many other artists at the time, she was granted access to those spaces. While many other artists painted scenes of harems based on other artworks or even from imagination, Baumann traveled within the Ottoman Empire in 1869 and was granted access to these spaces. Because the subject of these paintings was deemed too taboo or sensual for some European audiences, many of these works were stored away.