Rijksmuseum

Object data

watercolour, with opaque watercolour, over traces of graphite

height 336 mm × width 222 mm

Inscriptions

signed: lower right, in brown ink, Alida Withoos
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: Strasbourg lily

Provenance

…; sale, Dr Ernst Heinrich Krelage (1869-1956, Haarlem), Amsterdam (M. Hertzberger), 30 March 1948, no. 335, with inv. nos. RP-T-1948-115 and RP-T-1948-116, fl. 38 for all, to the museum (L. 2228), 1948

Object number: RP-T-1948-114

The artist

Alida Withoos (Amersfoort c. 1661 - Amsterdam 1730)

She was the daughter of the Amersfoort painter Matthias Withoos (1627-1703) and Wendelina van Hoorn (1618-c. 1680). Alida and several of her siblings were trained by their father.¹ In 1672, when the French threatened to siege Amersfoort, the family moved to Hoorn.

According to Arnold Houbraken, whom Alida knew personally,² she drew flowers, fruit and small animals in oils and watercolours.³ She also made still life and landscape paintings in the style of her father, which she often signed with her full name.⁴

Withoos moved within a network of prominent (flower) painters and collectors. In 1687, horticulturist and art collector Agnes Block (1629-1704) invited her to draw and paint the flowers in her garden at her estate ‘Vijverhof’ in Loenen aan de Vecht, near Utrecht. Alida also drew the Block’s famous homegrown pineapple – the first in Europe – which Block had cultivated in her one of her hothouses. The drawings made by Withoos at Vijverhof apparently did not survive.⁵ Withoos made twelve drawings of plants in the Amsterdam Hortus Medicus for the Moninckx Atlas (1686-1706), which is now preserved in the University of Amsterdam (inv. no. Hs. VI G 1-9), and contributed six sheets to the Konstboeck (c. 1690-1750) of Simon Schijnvoet (1653-1727), now kept at the Special Collections in the Library of Wageningen University.

In 1701, at age thirty-nine, Alida married painter Andries Cornelisz van Dalen (1672-?).⁶ The couple lived in the Anjeliersstraat in Amsterdam. It is quite likely that she stopped painting after her marriage: there are no dated works known after 1700, nor is she mentioned in records related to commissions. Alternatively, she might have assisted her husband in his workshop. Alida was buried on 5 December 1730 in the Westerkerk in Amsterdam.⁷

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

References
A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1718-21, II (1719), p. 188; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XXXVI (1947), pp. 116-17 (as W[ithoos]s Tochter Alida); E. Kloek et al., ‘Lexicon van Noord-Nederlandse kunstenaressen, circa 1550-1800’, in E. Kloek et al., Vrouwen en kunst in de Republiek. Een overzicht, Hilversum 1998, p. 174; K. Van der Stighelen and M. Westen, Elck zijn waerom. Vrouwelijke kunstenaars in België en Nederland, 1500-1950, Ghent 1999, p. 196; A. van der Willigen and F.G. Meijer, A Dictionary of Dutch and Flemish Still-Life Painters Working in Oils, 1525-1725, Leiden 2003, p. 221; M.W. Heijenga-Klomp, ‘Matthias Withoos (ca. 1627-1703) en zijn kinderen. Een Amersfoortse schildersfamilie’, Flehite, Historisch Jaarboek voor Amersfoort en omstreken (2005), pp. 129-30; L. Missel, ‘Withoos, Alida’, Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland, http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/WithoosAlida

Entry

Withoos’s flower drawings are very consistent in style; they feature a single species in various stages of bloom at the centre of an otherwise empty sheet. She drew the outlines with graphite and finished them with watercolour and touches of opaque watercolour. Despite her use of white highlights and darker colours to denote the curled shape of some of the leaves, the overall impression remains somewhat two-dimensional. Perhaps she recorded dried specimens instead of living plants.⁸

The present sheet and inv. nos. RP-T-1948-115 and RP-T-1948-116 were bought at the 1948 sale of Ernst Heinrich Krelage (1869-1956). The Krelage family ran an internationally renowned business in Haarlem, Krelage Nursery, which specialized in the cultivation of flower bulbs, lilies and dahlias. The family also had a large collection of horticultural books and related artworks.⁹ Of the three ex-Krelage sheets, the present drawing is the most refined. Here, the leaves and berries are rendered using various shades of green, red and purple.

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

Citation

C. Mensing, 2020, 'Alida Withoos, Nandina (Nandina domestica), c. 1680 - before c. 1700', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.63924

(accessed 23 November 2024 10:17:56).