Exhibited: The Hirschsprung Collection and The Skovgaard Museum, “Bertha Wegmann. At male på mange sprog”, 2022 (without number).

Literature: Gertrud Oelsner and Lene Bøgh Rønberg (ed.), “Bertha Wegmann”, 2022, ill. p. 153 (ill. no. 94) and mentioned p. 157 and 159.

As a reviled weed that is constantly tried to be put down, but which comes back again and again and refuses to be tamed, the dandelion became an important symbolic motif for female artists in the late 19th century and also and perhaps especially for Bertha Wegmann, who often used the dandelion as a motif. She depicted it both in full bloom in all its powerful yellow splendor, but often also as here, where it has transformed into a beautiful puff flower, just as she also used the dandelion both as a main motif, as here, but also as an element in larger compositions.

Lene Bøgh Rønberg writes in detail about the dandelion as a motif and its significance for women's struggle for equal rights at the end of the 19th century and specifically for Bertha Wegmann in the article “Manglede der noget? Om Bertha Wegmanns bidrag på ”Kvindernes Udstilling i 1895" in the above work about Wegmann from 2022, pp. 155–159.

Provenance: Sophie Alberti (1909). Thence by descent in the family until today.

Sophie Alberti (1846–1947) was a Danish suffragette and chairman of Kvindelig Læseforening (Women Readers’ Association) from 1891 to 1921, and it was she who in 1910 had the building on Gammel Mønt in Copenhagen built for the association. Sophie Alberti was a good friend of Bertha Wegmann, who also portrayed Alberti. Wegmann has also on several occasions lived in Kvindelig Læseforening, which functioned as a ‘ladies hotel’, library, lecture hall, doctor's consultation, etc. for women.