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Aasta Hansteen, Norwegian artist, writer, and feminist, was born in Christiania (now Oslo), Norway in 1824. Her education in painting began with Norwegian romantic painter Johan Gørbitz, followed by a stay at the academy in Copenhagen under Professor Jørgen Roed. Then, she studied in Düsseldorf under Carl Sohn before going to Paris in 1855 where she exhibited two paintings in the World Exhibition and studied under Ange Tissier. In 1880, she moved to the United States and spent the next nine years in Boston and Chicago painting portraits and writing articles about the women’s movement in the United States for Verdens Gang, a newspaper in Christiania, Norway. In 1889, Hansteen returned to Norway, where she joined Norsk Kvinnesaksforening (the Norwegian Association for Women’s Rights) and continued to write articles for Norwegian newspapers about the women’s movement. Hansteen died in Christiania in 1908.

Hansteen brought this painting with her from Norway to the United States, and it may have been one of three used as security for a loan she obtained in 1881 before traveling to Chicago.