Hansten, Aasta

Aasta Hansten (December 10, 1824, Christiania - April 13, 1908, Christiania ) is a Norwegian artist, writer, poet and feminist. Considered the first professional artist of Norway.

Born in Christiania (now Oslo) in the family of a professor of mathematics and astronomy. In 1844, she went to get an elementary art education in Copenhagen, where she studied with Jörgen Röd, then studied privately with a number of artists (primarily from Johan Gorbitz), in 1849 she left for Düsseldorf and studied for three years at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts; as an artist, she is considered to belong to the Dusseldorf School of Art. Upon returning to Norway in 1852-1855, she worked as a portrait painter in Christiania and soon became famous and in demand (her most famous work is the portrait of her father, painted in 1853); in 1855, exhibited at the World Exhibition in Paris. In the same year, however, due to the large number of orders and nervous strain, she left painting and went to live in Telemark, where she studied the local dialects of Norwegian, and after returning to her hometown she took linguistics lessons. I was interested in the Nynorsk dialect, in 1862 publishing a small book on it (Skrift og Umskrift i Landsmaalet) and becoming the first woman to write in this language. In addition, she wrote a number of poems in 1850s and 1860s in Nynorsk, in which she condemned urban life and defended traditional culture. Since 1871, she published under her name brochures in which she advocated the empowerment of women, thereby gaining fame and at the same time a negative reputation.

On April 9, 1880, she and her adopted daughter left Norway for the United States, where they lived for a total of nine years: six and a half in Boston and two and a half in the Midwest, mainly in Chicago. She initially worked as an American correspondent for the Norwegian newspaper “Verdens Gang”, then began painting portraits. In the USA she began, as in her homeland, to actively participate in the movement for women's equal rights, published brochures of the corresponding content, participated in congresses and lectures; In 1889 she returned to Norway, in 1904 she joined the Norwegian Society for Women's Rights as an honorary member and actively participated in the national feminist movement. Her main work on issues of women's equal rights was the work “Kvinden skabt i Guds billede” (1873, 2nd edition - 1908). In Christiania, she lived to the end of her life, continuing to write feminist brochures and deliver lectures. At the end of 1907 she fell ill, died in the spring of 1908 and was buried in the cemetery of the Savior. In 1910, a bust of Gustav Vigeland’s work would be installed on her grave.

According to the memoirs of contemporaries, she was distinguished by her harsh character, she visited a cafe from the 1870s (which was unusual for single women in Norway at that time), had a wine cellar at home, was extremely negative about religion and sought to imitate men in many aspects of her behavior, becoming an object of criticism and ridicule in modern Norway. In modern Norway, however, her figure is highly respected. She was on friendly terms with Henryk Ibsen, becoming, according to some assumptions, a prototype for one of the heroines of his play “Pillars of Society” ^[4] .