HANSEN, Frida - b. 1855 Stavanger, d. 1931 Oslo

Norwegian textile designer and weaver. In the 1870s, Hansen studied painting, winning a prize at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, which enabled her to study textile design in Cologne in 1894, and in 1985 to study under Pierre Puvis de Chavannes in Paris.

In 1900, she became a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and was represented at the Paris World Exposition by her famous tapestry, The Milky Way. She perfected the technique of transparent weaving, which lends her figures an almost ghost-like quality.

She was influenced both by Japonisme and the Pre-Raphaelites and stood squarely within the art Nouveau tradition in her thematic material. Hansen drew her own cartoons for her tapestries and also taught and ran a large workshop. Her tapestries and portières in an innovative transparent weaving technique are in the collections of numerous European museums.