Portrait of Mrs. Anna Dick

Portrait of Mrs. Anna Dick, dated 1896, places Werenskiold within the tradition of Norwegian bourgeois portraiture that developed alongside Oslo's expanding professional class in the late nineteenth century. The 1890s were Werenskiold's most productive decade as a portraitist — he had fully absorbed the lessons of French naturalism and was applying them to a Norwegian clientele that wanted honest characterization rather than courtly idealization. Female portraiture offered particular challenges and opportunities: the question of how to represent a bourgeois woman with the same psychological seriousness applied to male subjects was one that Werenskiold navigated through consistent attention to the sitter's individual presence. The National Museum holds this canvas as part of a portrait collection that documents Norwegian social life of the era alongside its cultural celebrities.

Werenskiold's female portraits share the same psychological directness as his portraits of male public figures — a deliberate refusal to shift into a softer, more decorative mode. The face receives the most worked paint, with careful tonal modelling. Dress is handled with attention to fabric quality but not as an end in itself. The palette is warm but not flattering.