Amalia Lindegren

Amalia Lindegren
Born	Amalia Lindegren 22 May 1814
Died	27 December 1891
Nationality	Swedish

Amalia Lindegren, (22 May 1814 – 27 December 1891) was a Swedish artist and painter. She was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts (1856).

Lindegren was born in . At the age of three, she was left an orphan after her mother's death and adopted by the widow of her alleged biological father, Benjamin Sandel. Her position as a child was somewhat humiliating, as a form of charity object for the upper classes, and in her later work, her paintings of sad little girls are believed to be inspired by her childhood.

Her drawings made the artist and art teacher (1810–1867) include her as one of the four women accepted as students at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in 1849, and in 1850, she became the first woman given an art scholarship from the academy to study art in Paris, where she remained until 1856. In Paris, she became the student of Léon Cogniet and Ange Tissier. She also studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and in Münich, and visited Rome in 1854-55. In 1856, she returned to Sweden.

She died in Stockholm.

Lindeberg is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting. She painted portraits and genre and was inspired by Adolph Tidemand, Hans Gude and Per Nordenberg and the contemporary German style. The painting she sent home from her studies in Paris was a scene of the drinking of alcohol, which according to the academy was "for a woman a surprising motive" and "This drinking scene bears no traces to have ben [sic] painted by a spinster".

As a portrait painter, she was recommended for her talent of observation, and her paintings from Dalarna, and her sentimental paintings of sad little girls (which are thought to be inspired by her childhood) were very popular; Lillans sista bädd (The last bed of The Little One) was displayed in Paris in 1867, in Philadelphia in 1876 and in Chicago in 1893.

Amalia Lindegren became an agré in 1853 and in 1856 a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. She was an honorary member of the British Female artists Society in London, and awarded the Litteris et artibus.

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