Rijksmuseum

Object data

watercolour, with opaque watercolour, over traces of graphite

height 405 mm × width 250 mm

Inscriptions

inscribed: lower right corner, in brown ink, (16.
inscribed on verso: lower right, in pencil , 28(?)

Technical notes

watermark: countermark (unidentified)

Condition

Some brown spots and stains around the edges

Provenance

…; collection Sam Segal (1933-2018), Amsterdam; by whom donated to the museum, 2013

Object number: RP-T-2013-58-33

Credit line: Gift of S. Segal, Amsterdam

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

Although this sheet is not signed, the technique is similar to several autograph drawings by Alida Withoos in the Rijksmuseum’s collection. For example, the somewhat graphic, flat rendering of the flowers in various phases of bloom, using bright colours, is comparable to the handling in inv. no. RP-T-1948-115. The use of quickly applied purple stipples in this flowers can also be found in a signed sheet depicting a Snake’s Head Fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) in the collection of Wageningen University.

Another clue for the attribution of the present sheet to Alida is the inscribed number in brown ink, preceded by a parenthesis, in the lower right corner. Quite a few drawings by Alida and her brother Pieter Withoos (1654-1692) include such a number. These sheets were likely part of the same, still unidentified collection, but are now dispersed among several institutions and private collections.⁸ The Rijksmuseum’s collection contains four drawings attributed to Pieter Withoos that bear such a number and were purchased in 1951 (see inv. nos. RP-T-1951-328, RP-T-1951-329, RP-T-1951-330 and RP-T-1951-331).

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

Citation

C. Mensing, 2020, 'attributed to Alida Withoos, Martagon Lily (Lilium martagon), ', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.669887

(accessed 23 November 2024 07:31:49).