Helena Westermarck 1857-1938

Helena Westermarck was a Swedish-speaking Finnish artist and writer.
She is known for her pioneering biographies of women. Westermarck began her writing career as a novelist. Her novels can be looked at as an artifact of women’s history and the everyday life of upper- and middle-class women. She edited the Swedish-language women’s magazine Nutid.

She began her pioneering biographic works in the early 1890s. These works include a series of biographies of female figures. Many of her biographies are on unknown female painters who were «discovered» in the 1980s, including Mathilda Rotkirch (1926). She also wrote about women who were pioneers in their respective fields, including Elisabeth Blomqvist (1916–17), Adelaide Ehrnrooth (1928), and Rosina Heikel (1930).