A City of One’s Own: The Parisian Letters of the Swedish Painter Hanna Hirsch-Pauli

Abstract

This article presents a critical overview of the letters of Swedish artist Hanna Hirsch-Pauli (1864–1940), written to her family during two study trips to Paris in 1885–87. Focused on descriptions of her extensive flâneries through the French capital, Hirsch’s letters challenge prevalent narratives of aspiring Nordic women artists in Paris that emphasize their professional pursuits and their movement largely limited to going back and forth between apartments and studios. Although the vibrant Paris cityscape Hirsch describes in her letters never appears in her paintings, the experience of the metropolis was crucial to her development as an artist, not as a source of inspiration but as a space of emancipation, "a city of her own."

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