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Oil painting with Sami motif

Emilie Demant-Hatt1944

Nordiska Museet

Nordiska Museet
Stockholm, Sweden

Danish artist Emilie Demant Hatt (1873-1958) donated this painting, along with 49 others, to Nordiska museet in 1953. All the paintings in the donation feature motifs from Lapland and the Sami culture. The paintings were completed during the period from 1936 to 1949 and are representative of her late expressionist painting.

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  • Title: Oil painting with Sami motif
  • Creator: Emilie Demant-Hatt
  • Creator Lifespan: 1873-01-24/1958-12-04
  • Creator Nationality: Danish
  • Creator Gender: Female
  • Creator Death Place: Frederiksberg
  • Creator Birth Place: Selde
  • Date Created: 1944
  • Subjects Depicted: Sami, animals, reindeer
  • Physical Dimensions: w129 x h148 cm
  • More Information: Emilie Demant Hatt was born in Jutland, Denmark and began her studies in 1898, attending the School of Drawing and Art Industry for Women (now the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts) in Copenhagen. After a few years of study, she left the Academy to study privately under artist Fritz Syberg. However, she graduated from the Academy in 1906. In 1904, she travelled with her sister to the Sami areas in northernmost Scandinavia. During this trip, she got to know, among others, Johan Turi (1853-1936), Sami, reindeer herder and artist. Demant Hatt became deeply interested in the Sami culture and studied Sami languages at the University of Copenhagen after her return home. In 1907, she returned to Lapland in northernmost Sweden and lived for almost a year with a nomadic Sami reindeer-herding family. The family were relatives of Johan Turi, who she had met during her previous trip. Turi had long been planning to write a book about Sami life and culture. Demant Hatt supported his plans and encouraged him in his work. Johan Turi's book 'Muitalus sámiid birra' (An Account of the Sami) was published in 1910 and was the first book written by a Sami in the Sami language about Sami life. In the first edition, the Sami text was accompanied by a translation into Danish by Emilie Demant Hatt. In 1917, the book was published for the first time in Swedish. The book has since been translated into a wide range of languages. Emilie Demant Hatt's stay among the Sami in the mountains influenced her art deeply and she often took motifs from the life of the Sami and the natural beauty of the mountains. This remains evident in her later paintings from the 1930s onwards, by which time she had adopted an expressionist style. The inspiration for these paintings came from the memory of the time she had spent in Lapland. Emilie Demant Hatt married the Danish cultural geographer Gudmund Hatt in 1911 and undertook a number of study and collecting trips with him to Sweden and Norway between 1912 and 1916. In 1940 Emilie Demant Hatt was awarded Nordiska museet's Artur Hazelius Medal for her ethnographic work in Lapland. Texts by Emilie Demant Hatt: 'Med lapparne i höjfjellet' (With the Lapps in the High Mountains, 1913), 'Ved ilden: Eventyr og historier fra Lapland' (By the Fire: Legends and Stories from Lapland, 1922), and 'Den lapske husmodern' ( The Sami Housewife, 1927). Inscriptions Signed "EH – 44"
  • Type: Sami
  • Rights: Photo: Peter Segemark, Nordiska museet
  • External Link: http://www.digitaltmuseum.se/things/oljemlning/S-NM/NM.0246063
Nordiska Museet

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