Olga Milles

Olga Milles, née Granner (1874–1967), grew up in Graz, Austria. Already as a child, Olga showed artistic talent. She studied art in Munich and Paris, and alongside her studies she supported herself by painting portraits. She saw her future as a professional artist, preferably working in a convent, but everything changed when she met Carl Milles in Paris in the late 1890s.



The marriage to the man who would soon become one of Sweden’s most famous sculptors created unusual living conditions, but Olga always maintained her right to her own professional and private life. Carl constantly spoke of Olga as the only person whose artistic opinions he cared about. The Milles couple collaborated on one occasion when Olga Milles painted the large Gustav Vasa sculpture that Carl Milles created for the Nordic Museum.



Several of Olga’s artworks can be seen in the Artists’ Home at Millesgården, as well as two interior design details she created: the paintings on the cabinets in the breakfast room and the flooring outside the Red Room.



Olga helped establish a foundation and donated Millesgården to the Swedish people in 1936. After Carl’s death, Olga Milles spent her final years in Graz, where she died in 1967 at the age of 93. Olga Milles is buried at Millesgården.

Olga Granner was born on January 25 in Leibnitz, Austria. She began her artistic education already at the age of twelve because her parents considered her an artistic prodigy. She was trained by the landscape painter H. A. Schwarch at Landschaftliche Zeichenakademie in Graz. As a teenager, she painted portraits, often of children from the Austrian upper class. She travelled between castles and carefully recorded her expenses and income. From this, it can be seen that she was able to contribute to her own and her family’s financial support.

Olga and Carl Milles moved to the United States when Carl became a professor at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit. Olga, then nearly 60 years old, had a greater distance from family and friends in Europe but was perceived as more accessible there. She had her own studio, painted some portraits, occasionally helped Carl, and supervised the household.



The couple stayed in the United States for 20 years during a dramatic period that culminated in the Second World War. In letters, Olga often expressed sympathies for Hitler and Mussolini, influenced in part by her family in Austria and her brother Erwin, who was a member of the National Socialist Party. During a stay in Graz in the 1920s, she also wrote that she had become interested in politics.