Asta Nørregaard

Asta Nørregaard was a Norwegian artist who was considered promising and skilled in Norwegian painting in the 1880s. She was born into a bourgeois family in Christiania, and was orphaned at an early age together with her older sister. She received her first education at Knud Bergslien's painting school for women, and later she continued her education in Munich and Paris. In Munich she perfected herself in the academic tradition, and in Paris she was influenced by both academic realism and plein air painting. Léon Bonnat was one of her teachers and role models as a portrait painter. Nørregaard lived in Paris until 1885, and in these years portraiture was an important genre in her work. When she returned to Kristiania, she established herself as a genre and portrait painter, and had several prestigious commissions. In the years 1887-1889 she spent time in Italy and France, painting impressionist landscapes and figure paintings. From 1889, portraits became completely dominant in her production, and she painted a total of approx. 300 portraits, most in life size. She received commissions from public officials and other public figures, but it is in the portraits of the country's rich and conservative upper class that she creates her most interesting images. According to his own catalogue, Nørregaard painted 116 portraits in the period 1890-1905, of which 70 were in pastel. She achieved her most original artistic success in the portraits of bourgeois women, using soft pastel chalks to bring out a delicate, feminine expression. She was also adept at illusory precious fabrics in refined fashionable costumes and refined decorative backdrops and props.