Rijksmuseum

Object data

watercolour, over traces of graphite

height 332 mm × width 225 mm

Inscriptions

signed: lower right corner, in brown ink, Alida Withoos
inscribed: lower right corner, in pencil, 21
inscribed on verso: in pencil, ? in a nineteenth-century hand, Datura Fastuosa Lin. / fl: plino
stamped on verso: lower centre, with the mark of the museum (L. 2228)

Technical notes

watermark: Strasbourg lily

Condition

Foxing throughout

Provenance

…; sale, Dr Ernst Heinrich Krelage (1869-1956, Haarlem), Amsterdam (M. Hertzberger), 30 March 1948, no. 335, with inv. nos. RP-T-1948-114 and RP-T-1948-115, fl. 38 for all, to the museum (L. 2228), 1948

Object number: RP-T-1948-116

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

The Indian thornapple (Datura metel) is cultivated all across Europe, but is native to Asia and North and South America. It develops multiple branches and can grow more than six feet tall. The plant is very poisonous; ingestion can be fatal in humans and other mammals. It has therefore been used a venom as well as a delirium during spiritual rituals.

Withoos’s drawing is somewhat harsh, and her rendering of this poisonous plant lacks the refinement that we see in some of her other works in the Rijksmuseum’s collection, such as inv. no. RP-T-1948-114. She also drew the plant too large; she ran out of space at the right side of the sheet, having to cut off parts of the large leaf.

The present sheet and inv. nos. RP-T-1948-114 and RP-T-1948-115 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 owned a large collection of horticultural books and related artworks.⁸

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

Citation

C. Mensing, 2020, 'Alida Withoos, Indian Thornapple (Datura metel), 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.63921

(accessed 19 September 2024 18:17:43).