Anna Lena Lindberg, ‘Remarkable women artists: Flower painting and professional changes in Copenhagen, c. 1690–1790’

Drawing on visual as well as written sources, this chapter discusses the different career strategies used by three early modern professional artists of flower painting between 1690 and 1790, when academic training was not accessible to women. The artists Maria Sibylla Merian, Johanna Marie Fosie and Magdalene Margrethe Bärens are represented at leading art collections in Copenhagen. Their strategies involved the acquisition of artistic skills through family participation in workshops, marketing through social networking and advertising through their self-portrals. Following current social rules, they turned to patrons and mentors within artistic and scientific communities as well as members of royal families or bourgeois clients.