Scarlet Ibis

Dorothea Maria Henrietta Gsell (Nuremberg 1678 - St Petersburg, 1743)

She was the youngest daughter of botanical artist and scientist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) and artist-publisher Johann Andreas Graff (1637-1701).² She had one sister, Johanna Helena (1668-1723), who was also an artist. Dorothea spent her youth in her native Nuremberg and Frankfurt and was trained by her mother, who moved the family to her native Frankfurt in 1681 to live with Johanna Helena’s grandmother, Johanna Sibylla (?-1691), after the death of her grandmother’s second husband, Jacob Marrel (c. 1613/14-1681). Dorothea’s parents were unhappily married; Graff moved back to Nuremberg in 1685 and the couple officially divorced in 1692.³ In 1685, Dorothea moved with her mother, sister and grandmother to the Labadist community in Walta, Friesland. In 1691, after her grandmother passed away, the three women left the community and set up a workshop in Amsterdam, where they sold Maria Sibylla’s books, dried insects and specimens, as well as drawings under their mother’s name.

In 1699, Dorothea Maria and her mother embarked on a ship to Suriname to study native caterpillars, insects and plants in preparation for a publication. They settled in Paramaribo and made regular trips to plantations of the Labadist community to catch insects. Maria Sibylla became ill, which forced the women to return to Amsterdam merely two years later, in 1701. The Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, commonly known as the ‘Suriname Book’ – the first scientific illustrated account on the natural history of Suriname – was published in Amsterdam in 1705. A few months after Dorothea Maria returned from Suriname, she married the surgeon Philip Hendriks (1671-1711). Their house at the Kerkstraat had a studio from which she and her mother and sister continued to work.⁴ When Dorothea’s husband died in 1711, she took the surname Merian. In 1715, she remarried the Russian painter Georg Gsell (1673-1740). After her mother’s death in 1717, she published the third edition of the caterpillar book.⁵

Two weeks before her mother died, Dorothea sold a large part Maria Sibylla’s work, including her study book, to Robert Areskine (1677-1718), the physician and advisor to Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725). This collection is now in the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. Further, she sold her mother’s book collection, printing plates and other workshop materials to bookseller Johannes Oosterwijk (?-?).⁶ Shortly thereafter, she moved with Gsell to St Petersburg, where they settled with her husband’s five children. Dorothea continued to make art and probably also sold hand-coloured editions of her mother’s books. She was involved with the decorations of the palace of Alexander Kikin (ca. 1670-1718) and the Kunstkamera. From 1726 onwards, she taught at the Academy in St Peterburg and was the keeper of the natural history collection. In 1736, she returned to Amsterdam to buy works by her mother for the Academy. She became a famous artist at the Russian court. She died on 6 May 1743. Today, she is seen as one of the major distributors of European art in Russia.⁷

Carolyn Mensing, 2020

References
U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 37 vols., Leipzig 1907-50, XV (1922), pp. 158-59 (as Gsell, Dor. Maria Henr., in entry on Georg Gsell); H. Gerson and B.W. Meijer (eds.), Ausbreitung und Nachwirkung der holländischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhundertsi, Amsterdam 1983 (rev. ed.; orig. ed. 1942), pp. 202, 359, 519, 556; I.N. Lebedeva, ‘De nalatenschap van Maria Sibylla Merian in Sint-Petersburg’, in R. Kistemaker et al. (eds.), Peter de Grote en Holland. Culturele en wetenschappelijke betrekkingen tussen Rusland en Nederland ten tijde van tsaar Peter de Grote, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum) 1996, pp. 60-66; E. Kloek et al. (eds.), Vrouwen en kunst in de Republiek. Een overzicht, Hilversum 1998 (Utrechtse historische cahiers, vol. 19), p. 152; K. Wettengl (ed.), Maria Sibylla Merian 1647-1717. Kunstenares en natuuronderzoekster, exh. cat. Haarlem (Teylers Museum) 1998, passim; R. Kistemaker (ed.), The Paper Museum of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg (c. 1725-1760): Introduction and Interpretation, Amsterdam 2005, passim; E. Reitsma, with S. Ulenberg, Maria Sibilla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis)/Los Angeles (J. Paul Getty Museum) 2008; P. Holtrop, Twee eeuwen Nederlanders in Sint-Petersburg. De Hollandse kerk als sociaal en religieus middelmunt, Zutphen 2013, pp. 80-111