Victoria Åberg

Victoria Åberg
Åberg (c. 1860s)
Born	Ulrika Victoria Åberg[1] (1824-02-24)24 February 1824[1] Loviisa, Grand Duchy of Finland
Died	15 July 1892(1892-07-15) (aged 68)[1] Weimar, Germany
Movement	Düsseldorf school of painting
Awards	Dukaattipalkinto (1861) First Class Artist (1866)

Victoria Åberg (24 February 1824 – 15 July 1892) was a Finnish landscape painter in the Düsseldorf tradition, notable as one of the first Finnish women to achieve a sustained professional career as an artist.^[2][3]

Åberg began training at the Finnish Art Society Drawing School (Suomen Taideyhdistyksen Piirustuskoulu) as part of its first cohort in its opening year, 1848.^[4] Afterwards she continued her studies first in Düsseldorf under Hans Gude, and later, funded by a state stipend, in Dresden and Weimar throughout the late 1850s and early 1860s.^[4][1]

Åberg's public debut came in 1849.^[4]

Alongside her artistic pursuits, Åberg worked as a secondary school arts teacher from the mid-1840s until early 1860s.^[4][1]

After that, she lived and worked outside of Finland — mostly in Germany, but also spending some years in Italy — more or less continuously from the mid-1860s onwards, at least in part because she felt that her Düsseldorfer work was not sufficiently appreciated in her home country.^[2][4]

In 1861, Åberg was only the second artist to win first prize in the Finnish Art Society's Ducat Contest [fi].^[4]

In 1866, she was awarded the honorary title of First Class Artist by the Imperial Academy of Arts of St Petersburg.^[4]

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