At left, Danish feminist author Amalie Skram wrote 17-plus novels inspired by women’s issues. At right,
Erik Skram, Amalie’s husband, was also a writer.
I get into trouble because I make connections that may not be there. On the other hand, I have succeeded in drawing conclusions because I have experience with connections that should be there.
A case in point: A reader found a drawing of a distinguished man with a beard at a thrift store and wondered if it had relevance. How to research? What inference to make? First I asked him, “What is the era, and what is happening in this era? Why is the portrayal important? Because — of course — it has been preserved for 100 years? Who thought it valuable?”
I am talking about the relationship between objects and people, and here we have a great example. A reader found, at a thrift store, a portrait of a Danish writer named Erik Skram (1847-1923), which he believed was a monoprint. But when he researched it further, he found that the monoprint (either a kind of drawing or a one-of-a-kind lithograph), was “after” a photo by a Danish photographer Fred Risse at size 5 by 5 inches.
He asked if he should open the paper at the back and look further. “Absolutely,” I said. So he did.
Underneath was a photograph of the Danish feminist author Amalie Skram.
Because I have written about unsigned works of art, the reader asked some salient questions. “I have opened the back. There’s a drawing or lithograph of Erik Skram, and underneath I see the photo of Amalie. The photo was shot by Fred Risse, and I have found the prototype photos of Erik, the subject of the litho or drawing, which I can see in photos by Fred Risse. What is the relationship between sitters, artists and the two images?”
The relationship is that Erik’s and Amalie’s images are framed together. And they are after photos by the same photographer who, one can infer, knew them both. That is not a mistake.
Here’s the connection: scandal.
Both Erik and Amalie were considered scandalous writers in the last few years of the 19th century in Scandinavia, which was tangling with feminist issues. (Think of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.)
What I considered strange and indicative was that Amalie wrote four times more important works than her husband Erik, was more socially aware novels than her husband, was more scandalous. But she died unknown. Her husband Erik, who wrote in the same “feminist” vein, died with the title of Knight of Denmark.
It was not until 1996 that Amalie’s grave was discovered and marked with a bronze bust of her, a statue was placed in Copenhagen, a postage stamp was printed in the late 1990s, and a school was named after her. It took a while, but she got recognized.
Amalie was born in Bergen, Norway, and I found a double portrait of her and Erik painted by naturalist Harald Scott Moller (1895), in a library in Bergen.
Amalie had an unhappy childhood, as her mother was abandoned with five kids by the father, and Amalie at 17 was forced into a lucrative marriage with a much older man. (Ironically Erik at this time was writing novels about just this topic, but from a male perspective.)
Amalie had a major breakdown after seven years of marriage. Then she was in a mental hospital for a few years. She had had two boys, and she left her husband to move to Copenhagen, where she met Erik, who also was an author.
Amalie hung in circles that were bohemian, but no man involved had that pioneering character of Amalie. Amalie had the courage to write about three major issues, and she wrote 17-plus novels about marriage and female sexuality in 1890s Scandinavia, how women have fared over multiple generations in Scandinavia and how mental institutions were abhorrent in treatment of females.
No one cared much until the 1990s when Denmark instituted a prize in her name for influential writers on female issues.
As fate would have it, Amalie, once married to Erik, had a daughter and another nervous breakdown. She was again committed to a mental institution. She lost her life six years later.
So now, we see the connection: the drawing of Erik and photos of Amalie are in the same frame, layered together, because that is the narrative. I often see this in families when someone wants to keep lives together as images.
The values of the drawing and photo are unknown. I suggested that the reader contact Bruun Rasmussen Auctions in Sweden for more information. I will report back.
Dr. Elizabeth Stewart’s “Ask the Gold Digger” column appears Saturdays in the News-Press.
Written after her father’s COVID-19 diagnosis, Dr. Stewart’s book “My Darlin’ Quarantine: Intimate Connections Created in Chaos” is a humorous collection of five “what-if” short stories that end in personal triumphs over present-day constrictions. It’s available at Chaucer’s in Santa Barbara.
