Anna Maria Ehrenstrahl (1666 – 1729)

Detail from The Swedish Painter Anna Maria Ehrenstrahl by Martin Mijtens, Sr. (1648 – 1736).  Who evidently had problems with how breasts look in real life.

Anna Maria Ehrenstrahl was a Swedish painter of the Baroque era.  She was the daughter of the painter David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl, who saw her talent and in about 1680, took her on as an assistant in his acclaimed workshop where she painted the details in paintings.  As his assistant, she learned by copying her father’s works, so it is perhaps unsurprising that she painted portraits and allegorical paintings like her father did.

In 1687, at the age of twenty one, she completed an allegory of the four seasons, and an allegory of Cupid and Psyche. Soon thereafter, she was in demand to produce royal portraits, including those of Queen Ulrika Eleonora, Prince Consort Fredrik I, Prince Gustav, and Prince Karl Gustav.