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 (1907), which won an award at the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition in London and was purchased for the Petit Palais in Paris. Other notable works include the Anzac Medal (1916), created to raise funds for Australians and New Zealanders who fought in the Gallipoli campaign, and Sacrifice (1926), the war memorial in Formia, Italy.
Ohlfsen's portrait medallions were commissioned by or on behalf of a wide range of public figures, such as the actor Mary Anderson, the poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, and several senior politicians, including H. H. Asquith, David Lloyd George, Billy Hughes, and Mussolini, who allowed her to sketch him in 1922 at the Palazzo Chigi while he worked.
In 1948 Ohlfsen and her lifelong partner, Hélène de Kuegelgen, were found dead in their apartment in Rome as a result of a gas leak, deemed by the police to have been an accident."Death of Sculptress". Kalgoorlie Miner. Associated Press. 11 February 1948. 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. Twenty-five of her works are known to have survived, out of at least 121.
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.For seven daughters, see "Obituary". The Sydney Mail. 5 August 1908. p. 324.
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,"New Theatre at Melbourne". The Era (London). 29 July 1855. p. 11; first published in the Melbourne Age. 19 April 1855. Thompson, David (29 November 2018). "Melbourne’s first pop-up theatre". CBD News. 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. A 1908 Sydney Mail profile described her when she left school as a "tall, willowy girl of 16, with a very distinguished manner, beautiful dark eyes, and hair, and a brilliant complexion".M. S. (10 June 1908). "Stage & Studio: With especial reference to the distinguished career of an Australian artist in Europe". The Sydney Mail. p. 1520. 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. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that she would leave Sydney on the SS Oldenburg for Bremen, Germany, on 24 December 1892.
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.. The historian Ros Pesman writes that "either [Ohlfsen], the journalist, or both constructed a romantic narrative of the life of the 'lady artist', a little outré and eccentric, including early exotic adventuring and later participation in a cosmopolitan and sophisticated art world.".
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." She also called it a nervous breakdown caused by "overwork and too little money"."Australian Sculptress Honored in Italy". The Daily Telegraph (Sydney). 18 December 1926. p. 19. 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,"A Sydney Musician". The Inquirer and Commercial News. 6 November 1896. p. 14. 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. "I taught music, counterpoint and harmony," she wrote, "coaching musical students for their examinations. Then I became a sort of private secretary to the American ambassador [Ethan A. Hitchcock]. He had a newspaper in St. Louis, of which he still retained control while carrying out his ambassadorial duties." Apparently she wrote articles on Russian issues for American newspapers under the ambassador's byline. She began studying painting and sculpture and said she had painted a "great matchbox of wood" that the Empress of Russia bought at a bazaar.; . 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
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.Cornstalk, Ann (2 December 1912). "Representative Women in Australasia: Miss Dora Ohlfsen". The Lone Hand. 12(68). p. 132. 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.; for no. 72, also see 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.; ; . "[A]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."
Engraving portraits on medallions became fashionable in Europe in the early 20th century, and Kuegelgen used her connections to secure commissions."Medallion Portraits Europe's Latest Fad". The Washington Times. 13 August 1906. p. 7. In 1903 three of Ohlfsen's paintings were exhibited in Rome at the annual Mostra Della Società Amatori e Cultori di Belle Ari; she told a reporter she had been introduced to Queen Elena of Italy.; "Woman's Page". The Freeman's Journal. 30 May 1903. p. 30. 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. Nellie Melba, the Australian soprano, who also sat for one in England in 1906."Music and Drama". The Sydney Morning Herald. 25 August 1906. p. 4.
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.", cited in and translated by .
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."The awakening of Australian art". Art Gallery of New South Wales. Retrieved 22 October 2019. "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." In June 1908 the medal won an award at the Franco-British Exhibition in London."Exhibition of Australian Women Artists' Work". The Times. 24 June 1908. issue 38681. p. 12. "Art Abroad: An Australian Sculptress Wins Distinction". The Sydney Morning Herald. 1 July 1912. p. 8. A few months earlier, Ohlfsen's work had been praised in Rivista di Roma, in a three-page cover story by Rusconi: