Amalia Lindegren (Swedish artist and painter) 1814 - 1891
Lindegren was born in Stockholm. At the age of three, she was left an orphan after her mother's death and adopted by the widow of her alleged biological father, Benjamin Sandel. Her position as a child was somewhat humiliating, as a form of charity object for the upper classes, and in her later work, her paintings of sad little girls are believed to be inspired by her childhood. Her drawings made the artist and art teacher Carl Gustaf Qvarnström (1810–1867) include her as one of the four women accepted as students at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in 1849, and in 1850, she became the first woman given an art scholarship from the academy to study art in Paris, were she remained until 1856. In Paris, she became the student of Léon Cogniet and Ange Tissier. She also studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and in Münich, and visited Rome in 1854-55. In 1856, she returned to Sweden. She died in Stockholm.
