Oh, when I think back, I believe I have had the most wonderful life anyone could wish for. Always able to travel, always able to get to the places one wanted, and always with plenty to do. You could not ask more from life than that. So said Marie (née Marry) Henriques about her life in her 76th year, two years before her death. Henriques began her artistic training as a pupil of the Danish painter Frants Henningsen. She then became a pupil of the Belgian painter Alfred Stevens in Paris before returning to Copenhagen to study at The Women’s Art School.
Henriques was one of the leading forces behind the founding of The Danish Women’s Artist Association in 1916 and, subsequently, of the Artists’ State-Subsidised Sketching School, which was established in 1918 as a response to the art academy’s gender-segregated teaching. Henriques firmly believed that art must not stand still. And she did not stay in one place either. Bequeathed by Henriques to Statens Museum for Kunst, her painting The Painter Tom Petersen, Sitting in a Veranda shows a room from the Hotel Harmonien in Ærøskøbing, while Landscape, depicting a mountain scene from Italy.
Henriques grew up in the heart of Copenhagen in a family that was part of the Jewish bourgeoisie. The home was a cultural gathering point whose regular guests included Danish artist, Carl Bloch. In the literature about Marie Henriques, her Jewish background receives little attention. However, her descendants has pointed out that shortly before her death, her family placed her in exile at the sanatorium Montebello in Elsinore to protect her from the Nazis.
