Marie von Bunsen
1860–1941 · German writer and watercolourist born in London
Marie von Bunsen (London, 1860 – Berlin, 1941) was a writer, watercolour painter and host of a literary salon in Germany at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Born in London to a Prussian father, she is remembered above all for her travel books and biographies.
The daughter of a Prussian politician who sat in the Reichstag, and of a mother from a wealthy British banking family, she grew up with enough money to spend long periods travelling in England, Italy and North Africa. She painted watercolours and from 1882 to 1927 belonged to the Association of Berlin Women Artists. For a time she was lady-in-waiting to Empress Victoria, a post that ended with the death of Emperor Friedrich III in 1888.
From 1905 she organised a salon with Hedwig Heyl and Else Schulhoff at her house in the Tiergarten district of Berlin. Her best-known works include Sicily (1910), about the Italian island, and In the Far East (1934), based on her journeys through Asia, as well as biographies such as her study of John Ruskin (1903). In 1918 she joined the German Democratic Party.