Dora Ohlfsen-Bagge

Adela Dora Ohlfsen-Bagge (22 August 1869 – 7 February 1948), known professionally as Dora Ohlfsen, was an Australian sculptor and art medallist. Working mostly in Italy, her first prominent work was a bronze medallion, The Awakening of Australian Art, which won an award at the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition in London and was purchased for the Petit Palais in Paris. The women were buried together in the city's non-Catholic cemetery, and friends packed up the contents of Ohlfsen's studio, which have never been traced.

Early life and education

The fourth of seven daughters, Ohlfsen was born in Ballarat, Victoria, to Kate Ohlfsen-Bagge, née Harrison, an Australian whose family were from England, and Christian Hermann Ohlfsen-Bagge, an engineer born in Grabionna (now Poland) of Norwegian stock.

The family was well known locally. Kate Ohlfsen-Bagge was the daughter of Captain John Harrison—born in Cumberland, England, and known in Australia for land squatting and political activism—and granddaughter of the first government printer in Victoria, George Howe. Christian Ohlfsen-Bagge moved to Australia in 1849 and made money during the Victorian gold rush. In 1855 he was the architect of the Olympic Theatre in Melbourne (demolished in 1894), which had been constructed in England and shipped to Australia, and he was involved in the construction of the Ballarat public library and the Bondi Ocean Outfall Sewer.

When Ohlfsen was 14, the family moved to 4 Mona Terrace, Darling Point, a suburb of Sydney, and from 1884 to 1886 she attended Sydney Girls High School. From around 1888 she studied piano under the French pianist Henri Kowalski, and in June 1889 she performed at the Criterion Theatre. The Sydney Mails Illustrated Supplement featured a profile of her in January 1893, reporting that she had taken Kowalski's place at the Sydney University Musical Society in May 1891 when he had been unable to play—the reporter said "her touch was clear and sparkling"—and at the city's YMCA hall the following May she had given a recital that included Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23.

In or around July 1892 Ohlfsen decided to study music in Berlin, a plan that was financed by a female friend, apparently with help from Francis Bathurst Suttor, the Australian Minister for Education, and Alfred Pelldram, Consul-General of Germany for Australia.

Berlin and St. Petersburg Information about Ohlfsen's life in Europe derives in large measure from Ohlfsen herself, mostly in letters to journalists and friends, including Gother Mann, director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. There are inconsistencies between the accounts.

In Berlin she attended Theodor Kullak's Neue Akademie der Tonkunst, where she studied under Moritz Moszkowski and said she had played for the Kaiser. Her time in Berlin was cut short by health problems, which she attributed to neuritis in her left arm. "All arrangements were made for my debut," she told an interviewer, "and a concert tour through Germany arranged, for which I was to be paid. Now, it was almost unheard of for a debutante to receive payment, and a foreigner appearing there had never previously been paid. My master had arranged that I should. Just as everything was ready, neuritis of the arm developed in a bad way, and I had to give up music entirely, and all thought of becoming a pianiste." The Australian Economic Depression of 1890 had reportedly left her father unable to fund her studies.

Her career as a pianist over, she visited friends in Oranienbaum, Russia, on the Gulf of Finland, and there, it seems, she met her lifelong companion, Hélène (or Elena) de Kuegelgen, a Russian countess. By 1896 she was trying to make a living in St. Petersburg. She also began studying theosophy, a common interest at the time, and said she had turned to art after spiritual voices urged her to do so.

Move to Rome Via di S. Nicola da Tolentino Via di S. Nicola da Tolentino 72, Rome; the corner windows are thought to have been Ohlfsen's studio.

Fearing the onset of the 1905 Russian Revolution, Ohlfsen and Kuegelgen moved to Rome in 1902. "From an artist's viewpoint," she wrote, "there is no country like Italy. Its very air breathes the cameraderie and Bohemianism which every artist craves." In letters and interviews, Ohlfsen said she had taken painting classes from Manuel Benedito-Vives at the Spanish Academy; Kuegelgen apparently worked there in or around 1906, perhaps as a model. Ohlfsen also said she had been taught sculpture by Camille Alaphilippe at the French Academy in Rome; Paul Landowski, creator of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro; and the metal engraver Pierre Dautel. Art historians Eileen Chanin and Steven Miller note that the French Academy was open only to male French citizens at the time, so Ohlfsen probably attended evening classes there. They write that Dautel, who specialized in medallion portraits and had been compared to Pisanello, had the greatest influence on Ohlfsen.

The women settled into a studio and apartment at Via di S. Nicola da Tolentino 72, opposite the church of San Nicola da Tolentino agli Orti Sallustiani and near Piazza Barberini. It seems they lived there until their deaths in 1948. The Via di S. Nicola da Tolentino was a well-known haunt of writers and artists. The American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens lived at No. 72 in 1871–1875, as did Franklin Simmons during Ohlfsen's time there. Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women (1868), apparently had an apartment on the same street in 1870–1871 and, according to Susan Cheever, sat for her first portrait in the studio of the American artist George Healy, also on S. Nicola da Tolentino. "ll the well-known singers, artists, men of letters, society leaders are to be seen," a reporter wrote of Ohlfsen's weekly salons in her studio, "and almost every language to be heard." In 1905 three of her portrait low reliefs (bas-reliefs) were shown there, and she exhibited again in 1906 and 1907. Her work at this time included a medallion of Hélène de Kuegelgen (c. 1903), one called Mother and child (1906), medallions of Mattia Battistini and Solomiya Krushelnytska (1906). and of the actor Mary Anderson (1906), which Ohlfsen created in England while staying at Anderson's home in Broadway, Worcestershire.

In June 1907 the art historian Arturo Jahn Rusconi wrote in Emporium of Ohlfsen's "delightful bas-reliefs in bronze, portraits and various compositions, executed with tremendous grace and subtlety of spirit. This year, as well as some portrait medals and plaquettes finely worked up, she has exhibited a very beautiful plaque, Autumn [l'Autunno], which together with refined taste also demonstrates mastery of sculptural modelling."

The Awakening of Australian Art (1907)

The first of Ohlfsen's art to be added to a public collection was The Awakening of Australian Art (1907), a bronze medallion 29.5 cm in diameter, which the French government purchased in 1907 for the Petit Palais. "Australia is personified as the New Dawn or Venus arising from the sea," Chanin and Miller write. The pastoral scene on the back, with its "strangely living flock of sheep and the lonely shepherd", conveys "the whole soul and spirit of wide spaces of marvellous solitude and of newness and freedom", in the view of one reporter. "Miss Ohlfsen has caught the spirit of Australia." A few months earlier, Ohlfsen's work had been praised in Rivista di Roma, in a three-page cover story by Rusconi:

The Art Gallery of New South Wales bought a full-sized cast of The Awakening of Australian Art in 1910. According to Chanin and Miller, Ohlfsen used several processes to create medals. The more traditional method was to work from the model in wax, after "cut[ting] the design on a soft block or a die. The die was then hardened and placed in a hydraulic press and the medal struck down from this." They offer her medal of Gabriele d'Annunzio (1907) as an example. For The Awakening, they believe she used a reducing machine. After creating a design in wax or clay, she would create a plaster cast and "from this, a positive casting in iron or bronze. This large metal model was then placed in a reducing machine and copied in a reduced size mechanically, probably on demand and often by a Parisian company which specialized in the process."

Frances Fitzgerald Elmes, who compared Awakening to Bertram Mackennal's Circe (c. 1893), reported in September 1908 that Ohlfsen had visited the Franco-British Exhibition in London, which, as well as showing Awakening, had also exhibited the medallion portrait of Mary Anderson.

Visit to Sydney (1912–1913)

Hoping to receive a commission in Australia, she returned for 15 months in July 1912. She had made clear in 1908 that she missed Australia: "The scent and sight of a piece of wattle, the scent of gum leaves, even the trying hot winds of Rome affect me indescribably, and bring with them a nostalgia which shows me that my heart is always entirely Australian." Among the works shown was a medallion portrait in lead of Hélène de Kuegelgen, showing "that fair-haired beauty as a woman of noble elegance of face and figure, who leans her chin upon her hand. The modelling is full of detail, and the eye is charmed by the dimpled arm," according to the Sydney Morning Herald, In June 1913 Campbell Carmichael, Minister of Education, unveiled Ohlfsen's bronze medallions of Shakespeare and Goethe in the auditorium of the Little Theatre. After Sydney, she held an exhibition of her medallions in Melbourne.

Art Gallery of New South Wales commission (1913)

Deciding to depict a chariot race—the Sydney Morning Herald called it "A Roman Chariot Race" in April 1914—Ohlfsen began work on it after returning to Rome in October 1913. She told the newspaper she needed to work in her own studio "with my friends coming in and out, criticising and helping"; she hoped to return to Australia the following year to see it installed. By 1917 she had sent the trustees photographs of the completed plaster cast (below), and later she sent them two examples of the cast, both lost. She said in 1920 that it had taken her two years to complete the cast and that she had exhibited it in Rome.

There was also an artistic disagreement. Ohlfsen wrote to Mann in October 1916 about the portraits of da Vinci and Michelangelo: "those two enormous heads will kill the importance of the principal panel". She wrote later: "You have not answered me as to my suggestions for the two end panels of one yard square. As I pointed out in a previous letter two large heads of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci would be anachronisms as they don't belong to the Greek epoch of the panel. It is a Greek chariot race."

The cancellation came as a great shock to Ohlfsen, who feared it would damage her reputation; she wrote to F. Graham Lloyd, the gallery's London agent, in November 1919: "I cannot tell you how amazed I am, nor how incomprehensible it all seems to me nor how unexpected." She complained about it to William Holman, Premier of New South Wales, because in 1916 the gallery had spent £4,920 on two statues by Gilbert Bayes. To keep costs down, she suggested to the trustees that they install the plaster cast and paint it a bronze colour until bronze returned to its pre-war price. But the cancellation stood; the chair of the trustees, John Sulman, wrote to Mann in January 1920: "Miss Ohlfsen is a woman, and although she has no case, can cause mischief."

The space above the front entrance remained empty for over 100 years. In October 2019 the gallery opened an exhibition, Dora Ohlfsen and the façade commission (12 October 2019 – 8 March 2020) to explore the cancellation. Six female artists from New South Wales were asked to examine Ohlfsen's photographs and reflect on what to do with the space.

Anzac medal (1916)

During World War I (1914–1918), Ohlfsen and Kuegelgen trained as Red Cross nurses. She wrote to Gother Mann of the Art Gallery of New South Wales:

In January 1915 she helped to nurse the injured during the Avezzano earthquake, and later worked in the Italian Auxiliary Hospital near her studio in Rome; photographs of her in her nurse's uniform were published in Australia. Other artwork at this time included a medallion of her friend Colonel Duke Fulco Tosti di Valminuta. She told Mann that, although she had created it for Gallipoli, the medallion "could be dedicated to those fallen in this war in general. If it should be put to any use by the Government I should like half of the proceeds to go the mutilated." The woman was based on 21-year-old Alexandra Simpson, who lived in Rome, the daughter of the British High Commissioner in China. Peers argued that the image of the soldier on the reverse, almost in silhouette, "avoided the usual over-literal depiction of men in uniform, which characterises the more pedantic medals that generally were produced in Australia during and after the war. The almost total emphasis on the outline of the figure allows [Ohlfsen] ... to consider the question of negative, as well as positive, space within the roundel suggesting ... how keenly she attended to the issue of designing for the medal format." Edward, Prince of Wales received the first medal, and Wade, along with Generals William Birdwood, John Monash, and Talbot Hobbs, joined a committee in 1919 to oversee the distribution. Ohlfsen wrote to the director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in January 1917: "I am doing a series of medals on my own account to commemorate the war. One for Anzacs, which is finished, one for the Italians, one for the artists of the French Academy (Villa Medici) in Rome and one of the Russian Cavalry." Valued at £15 in 1978 in Seaby's Coin and Medal Bulletin, several Anzac medals are held in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Art Gallery of Ballarat, and the Australian War Memorial. A reporter at the unveiling ceremony assumed the woman was a nurse.

Visit to Sydney (1920–1922)

The fascists became a source of many of her commissions. Ohlfsen was "strongly influenced by the cult of dynamic he-men forging history, in line with early Italian Fascism," Stella Free wrote in the Grove Dictionary of Art. "With modernist overtones, her art is a celebration of idealized figures in their prime, conveying patriotic themes and nationalistic sentiment." At the time she was reportedly the only woman in Italy and the only non-Italian to have been awarded such a commission. In February 1925 she told a correspondent that the work was completed, apart from finishing touches, and was being sent to Formia. She described the ceremony in a letter:

Chanin and Miller write that Ohlfsen's "choice of bronze and marble for her monument, the decorative band of fasci at the top of the support and her coupling of masculine sacrifice with feminine nurturing fits well with the fascist agenda for sculpture, in its promotion of the myth of Italianiata. Vitalist notions popular the time probably also influenced the work. ... Interest in 'body culture' was a feature of the 1920s, with both communists and fascists emphasising physical fitness as a key to national regeneration." Mussolini reportedly told Ohlfsen: "you may now be considered an Italian sculptress." Reportedly to Ohlfsen's great distress, the Formia memorial was dismantled in 1941—deemed to be "of great historic and patriotic value, but not of great artistic worth"—but it was restored in 2008.

Ohlfsen was highly critical of the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park, Sydney, which was completed in 1934. She wrote in a letter: "I'm perfectly shocked at the war memorial they have erected in Sydney done by stonemasons I hear.... you will note that the nature of the scaled soldiers in a row is nothing but an illustration of 'Latrine Parade' so much described in all the war books. Added to that people write to me that there is to be a centrepiece of a naked woman strung up on a cross!! And the authors of this abomination have the effrontery to call it 'Sacrifice' stealing the title of my war memorial in Formia?" Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1935, Huntly McCrae Cowper described "a big room high up in a corner with long windows looking down into narrow streets on either side. As we came in I felt that I was in a crowd of silent people. All round us were figures in bronze and marble, some shrouded in calico, looking like ghosts in fading light.

When Mary Jay, a Sydney writer, visited in 1933, the chariot-race plaster cast created for the Art Gallery of New South Wales was hanging on the wall, and the room was full of sculptures: gardens and fountains, a relief of the Greek god Dionysus in grey stone, several in pink marble, and a mural of Anthony of Padua with Australian flowers; Ohlfsen was working on another of Francis of Assisi with Australian birds. "There are divans and cosy corners, where a glass of Italian vermouth and a cigarette may be enjoyed by the favoured; there are also screens behind which we may not venture, and the whole place has an atmosphere of artistic mystery—very Italian looking and charming." Ohflsen she described as "tall and graceful with remarkable hands. While working she swathes her head in a coloured kerchief, which hides her pretty hair."

Death

Collections Ohlfsen's work is held in: Australia: Australian War Memorial, National Library of Australia, and National Gallery of Australia in Canberra; the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Powerhouse Museum, and University of Sydney in Sydney; the National Museum of Victoria in Melbourne; and the Art Gallery of Ballarat. and the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.

Posthumous exhibitions Through Women's Eyes, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 30 July 1994 – 30 June 1995. Dora Ohlfsen and the façade commission, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 12 October 2019 – March 2020. Nellie Melba (1906). Mattia Battistini (1906), lost. Solomiya Krushelnytska (1906), lost. Cardinal William Henry O'Connell of Boston (1911), bronze, extant. Josef Altenweisel, Prince-Bishop of Brixen (c. 1911). Sir James Oswald Fairfax (1912). Two Little Roman Beggars (by 1912). Jarvie Hood (c. 1912), extant. Anzac Medal (1916), bronze. Medal for the American airforce (1919). H. H. Asquith (1919), bronze, extant. General Sir William Birdwood (1919). Robert Randolph Garran (1921). Donald Grant (by 1921). Premier Holden, bronze, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, extant.

Herbert M Moran of Sydney. Roma MCMXXXIX. xvii

Sculptures

l'Autunno / Autumn (1907). Le septième voile (1911), a nude, lost. Passion (c. 19111), a nude, tin relief. Dawn (by 1912), a nude, lost. Art Gallery of New South Wales chariot race plaster cast (1913–1917), lost. Mrs. Piercy (1916), lost. Head of Australia (1917), plaster cast, lost. New Aphrodite (c. 1918), a nude, lost. Eve Balfour (c. 1919). The Blind Ardito (c. 1917), lost. Sacrificio (1926), bronze and white marble, the Formia war memorial, removed 1941, restored 2008. Papuan Daughter (c. 1927), a nude, lost. Cosacco del Kuban (1929), "waxed gesso", lost. The Madonna (1930s). Prince Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Aosta (by 1931). Lilian Earp Bobbie Macmillan (c. 1920), pastel. Austrian bombing of Venice, pastel, lost. Anthony of Padua (c. 1933). Francis of Assisi (c. 1933).