The Paper Trail
What other people printed about her while she was alive — the scandal of 1887 fought out in the Viennese papers, the thin but real trail she left in English and Italian, and the criticism that proves her standing. Anything she wrote is under Works instead, including her own reply to the 1887 jury. Each text here is reprinted in full, annotated, set beside its original where that original is not in English, and linked to a scan wherever we have found one.
“Mors Imperator”: A Satirical Poem (1887)
A Viennese satirical poem defending her — the jury allows Makart-style nudes but bans her “naked truth.”
Report on the “Mors Imperator” Affair (1887)
A neutral Austrian art-press account of the Mors Imperator affair, capturing the confused back-and-forth over whether the Kaiser wished the picture admitted.
de Gubernatis, Dizionario degli artisti italiani viventi (1889)
The standard dictionary of living Italian artists carries her as a Rome painter, and remembers a fourth picture, Evoè, Bacche!, shown in Rome in 1883 rather than at Turin.
The Art Journal (London), 1890
A studio-visit profile — the richest contemporary English text on her, describing her Munich studio and Mors Imperator.
Art and Handicraft in the Woman's Building (1894)
The official survey of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair names her painting 'Elaine' among the leading German women artists.
Rilke on Preuschen (1896)
Rainer Maria Rilke, aged 20, reviewed her at length and admiringly — 'is the poem a picture, or the picture a poem?'
"Megalomonia [sic] Named as the National Vice" — an interview (1910)
A syndicated New York interview of March 1910 — her acid, cosmopolitan impressions of America, in her own voice.
"German Artist Here" — Salt Lake City (1910)
A local notice of her American tour, listing five paintings by title and dating her first fame to Mors Imperator.