Provenance: Family of the artist.

Emilie Demant Hatt grows up in the Sundsøre region by the Limfjord. She receives her first drawing lessons from Ida Schiøttz-Jensen on Fur and then at Emilie Mundt and Marie Luplau's drawing school. From here, in 1898, she admits to the Art School for Women at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts. From 1901–02, she is taught by the Funen painter Fritz Syberg, and in 1903, she makes her debut at the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition. In the same year, she co-founds the artists' association Cirklen.

Early on, she has an eye for the distinctive character of her home region, while also longing for more distant horizons. In 1904, she travels to Lapland for the first time and then lives for long periods among the Sami in Northern Sweden.

As a very young woman, she is in a relationship with the composer Carl Nielsen, who writes several pieces of music for her, but in 1911 she marries the geographer Gudmund Hatt. After this, her ethnographic interest is further stimulated. Together they make many trips, including to the Virgin Islands.

Emilie Demant Hatt's works can be found primarily at Skive Art Museum and the Nordic Museum in Stockholm.