Hanna Hirsch Pauli – The Art of Being Free

The Swedish artist Hanna Hirsch Pauli (1864-1940) is one of the most notable Nordic artists from the turn of the 20th century. This, the first-ever monographic exhibition dedicated to her work, provides an opportunity to explore both familiar and lesser-known works, and to get to know Hanna Hirsch Pauli as both an artist and a person. 

The exhibition features Hanna Hirsch Pauli’s best works, created in the course of a long, intensive artistic career that spanned six decades. The exhibition traces Hanna Hirsch Pauli’s artistic development: from her upbringing in an upper-middle-class Jewish family and education at the Swedish Academy of Fine Arts to her years of artistic liberation as a student in Paris. It outlines her marriage to the artist Georg Pauli, her role as mother to three children, and how she made a name for herself as a portrait artist in turn-of-the-century Stockholm. Explore her landscapes, intimate family pictures and large-scale group portraits, and the late self-portraits created during the transformative, threatening 1930s – the final years of her life. 

The exhibition at The Hirschsprung Collection will also juxtapose Hanna Hirsch Pauli and her art with Danish works from the museum’s collection – by painters such as Bertha Wegmann, Peder Severin Krøyer, Agnes Slott-Møller and Viggo Johansen. It will also view her in the context of the museum’s founders – the art collectors Heinrich and Pauline Hirschsprung – who also belonged to the Jewish middle class and had strong Danish-Swedish connections. 

The exhibition is a collaboration with the Nationalmuseum Stockholm, which conducted the extensive research. The exhibition will run in Stockholm from 19 June 2025 to 11 January 2026. 

Augustinus Fonden, Ny Carlsbergfondet and Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond.