Anna Marie Johanne Sophie Holten

Sophie Holten was a Danish painter who specialized in portraits, flower paintings and genre works. She studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and learned engraving and modeling. She travelled to Paris, where she learned from prominent painters such as Félix-Joseph Barrias and Alfred Stevens. She exhibited her works in Denmark and abroad, and received acclaim for her portrait of the Swedish writer August Strindberg. She also painted a portrait of the Danish painter L. A. Ring, who was her friend and admirer. Sophie Holten was also involved in social work and feminism. She wrote reviews of female artists, lectured on clothing reform, and supported the Copenhagen Women's Exhibition in 1895. She was one of the first Danish women to convert to Roman Catholicism, and decorated the St Laurenti Church in Roskilde, where she lived with her friend and fellow writer Erika Rosenørn-Lehn. She died in 1930 and was buried in the churchyard of the Old Church of Our Lady in Roskilde.