Bolette Cathrine Frederikke Puggaard née Hage (1798–1847) was a landscape painter, one of unconditionally few 19th-century Danish women whose art lengthy beyond flower paintings. She and her husband, the merchant and shipowner Hans Puggaard, are remembered for their philanthropic deeds as capably as supporting many of the painters of the Danish Golden Age.
Born upon 7 February 1798 in Stege upon the island of Møn, Bolette Cathrine Frederikke Hage was the daughter of the merchant Christopher Friedenreich Hage (1759–1849) and Christiane Arnette Just (1778–1866). She was the eldest of the family’s many children. In 1830, she time-honored private tuition in painting below the highly praised artist Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg.
On 13 August 1816, she married the rich merchant Hans Puggaard (1788–1866) with whom she enjoyed a substantial degree of freedom, allowing her to manufacture her interest and expertise in landscape painting. Together when her husband, she socialized later many of the most prominent cultural and intellectual figures of the day, inviting them to their home on Store Kongensgade in central Copenhagen or their country house Skovgaard in Ordrup. The houses were exquisitely decked and the walls covered later than the best paintings of the time. The couple were among the patrons who supported the leading contemporary Danish artists, including along with many others Constantin Hansen, Wilhelm Marstrand, Jørgen Roed, Jørgen Sonne and Herman Wilhelm Bissen.
When visiting Rome in imitation of her intimates in 1835–36, she met several Danish painters and painted a number of landscapes. She and her husband developed a near friendship like sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. The two were the main initiators and artisans of the instigation of the Thorvaldsen museum in Copenhagen.
Bolette Puggaard exhibited at the Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition in 1838, 1844 and 1845. Her works were forward-thinking included in the 1895 Copenhagen Women’s Exhibition.
Bolette was furthermore politically engaged and strongly next to absolutism. When the Thorvaldsen museum was inaugurated, she put the French tricolour on the summit of the building, claiming to be ready to defend this play in even in stomach of the King if needed. Her view was that “it was Thorvaldsen who brought pardon in the arts, and it is our most noble adherence to battle for it“. Her passion for democracy was inspired by her brother Johannes Hage (1800-1837), a leading defendant of the abolition of absolutism in Denmark who took his own animatronics after having been condemned to censorship for life. Also her son in achievement Orla Lehmann, married to her daughter Maria, and cutting edge one of the main authors of the Danish innovative Constitution of 1848, had been jailed for his democratic ideas.
After misfortune from tuberculosis for some time, she died of influenza on 10 November 1847 in Copenhagen, before she could see the abolition of absolutism. She is buried in Holmen Cemetery and was survived by her three children, the merchant Rudolph Puggaard (1818–1883), the geologist Hans Christopher Puggaard (1823–1864), and Annette Maria Lehmann (1821–1849), an artiste herself.
Many of her descendants were reputed artists, such as the poet Helge Rode (1870-1937), the writer Jacob Paludan (1896-1975), the painter Oluf Hartmann (1879-1910), or the sculptor Rudolph Tegner (1873-1950).
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