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=== Life ===
==== Family ====
Alma del Banco came from an assimilated Jewish family. Her father Eduard Moses del Banco (1810-1881) ran a retail business selling furs, pig bristles, horsehair and feathers for bedding, located at Deichstraße 16. Her mother Therese Vallentin (1824-1884) originally came from Sweden. While the family was Jewish, the children were not raised religiously. After her father died, her youngest half-brother Siegmund (1846-1938) took over his fathers business at 21 years old and continued running it, presumably until 1890. After her mother died, Siegmund became head of the family and also the main provider for his three half-sisters Alma, Fanny (1857-1923) and Eleonore (1862-1934). The siblings lived together at their parents' apartment at Katharinenstraße 20. Alma and Siegmund would continue to live together from 1919 onward, since they were both unmarried. They moved a couple of times, but always stayed in the Old Town and New Town districts of Hamburg, which at the time were home to three quarters of the citys entire Jewish population. Siegmund rented a studio located at Große Theaterstraße 34/35,
==== Education in painting ====
At age 30, Alma de Banco shifted her main focus from arts and crafts to painting. From 1895 to 1905, like many female artists of the time, she got a painting education at the private ''Malschule für Damen'' (“painting school for ladies”) in Hamburg, founded by Valeska Röver. She studied impressionism under northern-german influence under her teachers Ernst Eitner and Arthur Illies. Eitner was a formative influence on her early works, as well as Cézanne and Matisse, whose works she studied autodidactically. She also travelled a lot through southern Europe, which led to her painting motives from the Hamburg area in an impressionistic way using the vivid color palette associated with the South. Additionally, she started experimenting with graphic simplification. Shortly before the start of World War I, she pursued further education in Paris, studying under Jacques Simon, André Lhote and Fernand Léger, with a focus on Légers early works as well as the contemporary art styles of cubism and expressionism.
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