Seated Woman Painting in an Interior

Since his donation of the collection Ploos van Amstel Knoef (2000), left by his father, which comprises more than four thousand drawings, mostly by 19th-century Dutch artists, Coen Schimmelpenninck van der Oye - who has been chairman of the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum Foundation for many years - has regularly donated individual drawings to add to the 'PAK collection'. In 2010 and 2012, for example, he donated three drawings by various artists, depicting painters in their studios. Unfortunately, the name of this female painter has not been added. We therefore do not know whether she painted professionally or as an amateur. Unfortunately, there are not many known female artists from the nineteenth century, although since 1870 the academies for visual arts as well as the most important artists' associations also admitted women. Doctoral research by Hanna Klarenbeek (2012) has shown that about 1,100 professional artists worked in our country in that century, in addition to 6,200 male artists. In our drawing it is difficult to estimate her age, as the facial features are not detailed, but she seems young. The monumental room in which she is painting, with the high stained-glass windows that open inwards at the top, can possibly be traced. Anyone with suggestions may let the curator know. We cannot see what she is painting, because the canvas is turned away from the easel, but a still life or an everyday scene is the most likely. Or she copies something. She paints meticulously, judging by the painting stick she holds under her left arm, together with palette and brushes. This served to support the painter's hand, while it was held against the edge of the canvas. [text: Albert Elen]