Ellqvist was an ambitious, skilled student during the early stages of the Modernist art movement,[6] and at the end of the National Romanticism period, which was represented in the works of[8] academy artists Carl Larsson, Anders Zorn, Bruno Liljefors and Richard Bergh. Ellqvist and her friends, were among the students of the academy who organized a protest against the conservative views of the school, which resulted in the creation of the influential Konstnärsförbundet (Artists Association).[6]