Suzette Skovgaard

Suzette Holten
The artist in 1870, painted by her father P. C. Skovgaard
Born	Suzette Catherine Skovgaard 1863 (1863) Copenhagen
Died	1937 Copenhagen
Occupation	Painter Ceramist
Organization	Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler

Suzette Catherine Holten (née Skovgaard, 1863–1937) was a Danish painter and ceramist who belonged to the Skovgaard family of artists. In addition to landscapes, flower paintings and portraits, she created and decorated ceramics and also worked as an embroiderer. As a woman, she was unable to achieve the same level of success as her father or brothers.

Born in Copenhagen on 29 January 1863, Holten was the third child of P.C. Skovgaard and his wife Georgia. Like her brothers Joakim and Niels, she became a painter. After her mother died when she was only five years old, Holten was brought up by her father in the affluent Østerbro district of Copenhagen. He took great care of her, introducing her to the works of the Danish Golden Age painters, thanks to his friendships with Lundbye, Marstrand and Constantin Hansen. He was also the first to encourage her to draw. After he died in 1875, she moved into the home of the painter Thorald Læssøe where she continued to have contacts with the artistic community. In 1894, she married the merchant Hans Nicolai Holten (1871–1937). They had no children.

Holten studied drawing under Carl Thomsen, Laurits Tuxen and Frans Schwartz but as a painter she was essentially self-taught. She continued her studies in Paris together with her friends Elise Konstantin-Hansen, Edma Frølich and Sofie Holten.

She also established a close friendship with the sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen who later married Carl Nielsen. She became one of the avant-garde artists associated with Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler which had been established to provide an alternative to the traditional methods of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. From 1883 and during the 1890s, she worked as a ceramist with artists such as Thorvald Bindesbøll and Theodor Philipsen at Johan Wallmann's pottery in Utterslev and at G. Eifrig's workshop in Valby. Her creations were inspired by classical sculpture and, like those of her friend Konstantin-Hansen, by Japanese art but she also drew on her own imagination. Some of her pieces were exhibited at Copenhagen's Nordic Exhibition of 1888.