[1][2][3] Anna Feldhusen was born and grew up in Bremen at a time when rapid industrial and commercial development, combined with an agricultural depression exacerbated by the increasing availability of inexpensive food imports from overseas (often imported via the port of Bremen) were driving a sustained mass-migration from the countryside to the German cities as people looked for ways to find higher and more predictable incomes.

In the case of Bremen, during the second half of the nineteenth century the pressures of intensifying urbanisation triggered a counter-wave of artists, often from prosperous mercantile families, escaping to an art colony in the countryside, the Künstlerkolonie Worpswede [de].

She determined to make her way in life as a professional artist at an early age, moving to Munich in 1892 to obtain the necessary instruction.

The motto Feldhusen added to her "ex-libris" stickers (identifying her as the owner in each of her books) was "Allein, ich will..." (loosely "Alone, I want and I will...") also reflects a certain rebellious determination to manage her life as an artist according to her own precepts and priorities, regardless of the gender-fixated expectations of others.

[3] Admirers cite Feldhusen's 1899 self-portrait, reproduced at the top of this article, as a further indicator of the remarkable self-confidence and self-knowledge with which she approached her art.

Stumpe's husband was a successful tobacco importer in Bremen, and Feldhusen frequently stayed overnight at her friend's summer home in Dötlingen.

Close by she had additional studio facilities at Dachau where she liked to inter-act with others involved with the artists' colony in the (not yet internationally infamous) little town.

Even while being based in the north, during the spring and summer months, she retained the lease on her little apartment in Dachau so that she might at any time return and spend a couple of weeks there.

[1] She would sign her artworks, for the avoidance of any unnecessary doubt, with the tagline "Bremische Malerin und Graphikerin" ("Bremen woman painter and graphic artist").

Several generations were and are made familiar with her images of the city and region through their continuing appearance in Bremen school teaching books.

One indication of her prodigious output comes from the accounting records of the arts publishers in Worpswede: These include more than 150 contracts for print runs of her images in excess of 1,000.

[1] Although Anna Feldhusen's work fell from critical and public favour for a number of years following her death in 1951, prices achieved at auctions during and since the 1970s indicate a progressive marketplace rehabilitation.