Bolette Puggaard


Bolette Cathrine Frederikke Puggaard née Hage
was a landscape painter, one of very few 19th-century Danish women whose art extended beyond flower paintings. She and her husband, the merchant and shipowner Hans Puggaard, are remembered for supporting many of the painters of the Danish Golden Age.

Biography

Born on 7 February 1798 in Stege on the island of Møn, Bolette Cathrine Frederikke Hage was the daughter of the merchant Christopher Friedenreich Hage and Christiane Arnette Just. She was the eldest of the family's many children. In 1830, she received private tuition in painting under the celebrated artist Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg.
On 13 August 1816, she married the self-made businessman Hans Puggaard with whom she enjoyed a substantial degree of freedom, allowing her to develop her interest and proficiency in landscape painting. Together with her husband, she socialized with many of the most prominent cultural and intellectual figures of the day, inviting them to their home on Store Kongensgade in central Copenhagen or their country home Skovgaard in Ordrup. The couple were among the patrons who supported the leading artists of the times, including Constantin Hansen, Wilhelm Marstrand, Jørgen Roed, Jørgen Sonne and Herman Wilhelm Bissen.
When visiting Rome with her family in 1835–36, she met several Danish painters and painted a number of landscapes. She exhibited at the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition in 1938, 1844 and 1845. Her works were later included in the 1895 Copenhagen Women's Exhibition.
After suffering from tuberculosis for some time, she died of influenza on 10 November 1847 in Copenhagen and is buried in Holmen Cemetery. She was survived by her three children, the merchant Rudolph Puggaard, the geologist Hans Christopher Puggaard, and Annette Maria Lehmann, an artist.