Anna Petersen

Although she showed some promise as an artist, specifically in genre painting, she struggled to find a place in the male-dominated Danish art world of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[2] Petersen began her training in Copenhagen at the Tegneskolen for Kvinder (Design School for Women) and later went to France where she was apprenticed to Jean-Jacques Henner in Paris.

Petersen initially focused mainly on figure painting with some portraiture, but slowly developed her interest in genre art; her works depicting common people at home or in church are among her most successful.

Ring and Niels Bjerre,[1] but her approach to her subject matter is completely different,[2] and her composition recalls that of the German artist Fritz von Uhde.

There are hints of an underlying darkness in the picture; the overturned pot among the hothouse plants is a motif of death and the girl appears both vital and tightly constrained;[2] this may just be because she has been posed as a model but it has been suggested that the sense of restrained energy indicates her powerful inner life has swept away her focus from her everyday tasks.

[9] Petersen produced only one known piece of sculpture, a monument for her parents' grave in Assistens Cemetery in Copenhagen; it is possible that she was taught to sculpt by Willumsen or another friend, Carl Johan Bonnesen.