If you think that female painters around the turn of the 20th century were unfree, invisible, or doomed to live only in the shadow of their male colleagues, think again.

With her latest book, Da træerne voksede ind i himlen, Sara Alfort pulls the rug out from under that notion and reveals a generation of women artists who lived wilder, freer, and far more successfully than history has so far recorded. Sara Alfort has read their letters and diaries and combed through archives to rewrite our cultural history.

This is the story of a flock of Scandinavian women who spread out across Europe at the end of the 19th century: painting nude models in Munich, exhibiting in Paris, drinking wine in Rome, painting mountains in Athens, rolling a cigarette, and hopping on a train to Florence. They made a living from their art, broke through glass ceilings, and carved their own paths.

Da træerne voksede ind i himlen takes us to the cities where these women gathered between 1874 and 1900. We visit Munich, Paris, the artist colony of Grez-sur-Loing south of Paris, and Rome, meeting artists such as the Danish Sofie Holten, Elise Konstantin-Hansen, Ludovica Thornam, Susette Skovgaard, Agnes Slott-Møller, Bertha Wegmann, and Marie Krøyer; the Swedish Julia Beck, Eva Bonnier, Karin Larsson, and Hanna Hirsch-Pauli; and the Norwegian Asta Nørregaard, Harriet Backer, and Kitty Kielland.

It is a sparkling and surprising tale of the women who were not merely present in art history — they helped shape it.

Join Sara Alfort as she brings their story to life in CC’s iconic Hall 6.