CHRIS BEEKMAN
1887 The Hague – 1964 Blaricum
YOUNG WOMAN IN PROFILE
black chalk, graphite and white heightening on paper, 478 x 317 mm
signed and dated lower right: Chris Beekman / 1906
provenance:
Willem Hoogendijk, the Netherlands
The model is young and notably beautiful, a quality that clearly did not escape the attention of the artist. Chris Beekman—only nineteen years old at the time—renders her appearance with remarkable sensitivity and technical control. The young woman is depicted with realistic precision, while simultaneously presented as a timeless, idealized figure. Her unadorned appearance and composed demeanor resonate with values traditionally associated with Dutch Protestant culture, particularly simplicity and inwardness. In this respect, the work aligns with a broader cultural preference in Dutch art for sobriety, realism, and quiet introspection.
Chris Beekman’s artistic trajectory is inseparable from his early social matters and sustained engagement with the conditions of labor. At the age of thirteen, Beekman had entered the workforce at the Rozenburg porcelain factory in The Hague, an experience that profoundly shaped both his social consciousness and artistic outlook. While Rozenburg’s artistic production around 1900 represented the apex of Art Nouveau design in the Netherlands, Beekman’s personal work diverged distinctly from its ornamental aesthetic. Influenced instead by socially engaged artists such as Théophile Steinlen and Vincent van Gogh, in his autonomous work he focused on depicting the marginalized figures of everyday life—vagabonds, laborers, and the urban poor—thereby aligning himself with a broader European realist tradition that privileged social critique over decorative refinement. The artistic milieu of The Hague, including figures such as George Hendrik Breitner, Jan Toorop, and Beekman’s teacher Willem Bastiaan Tholen, further contributed to the development of his early visual language, grounded in observation and empathy rather than stylistic excess.
A decisive moment in Beekman’s career occurred in 1913 with his introduction to the influential art critic and advisor H.P. Bremmer. Bremmer, a key advocate of Vincent van Gogh and the principal advisor to Helene Kröller-Müller, played an important role in the development of Beekman’s career. By acquiring a substantial group of Beekman’s drawings and facilitating the inclusion of more than one hundred works in the collection of what would become the Kröller-Müller Museum, Bremmer ensured Beekman’s visibility within a national framework of modern Dutch art.
Beekman’s brief engagement with abstraction between 1917 and 1919, as a contributor to the avant-garde movement De Stijl, marks a complex and often misunderstood episode in his development. Although he participated in the movement during its formative years, his commitment was neither doctrinaire nor formalist. His departure following accusations by Theo van Doesburg that he had politicized De Stijl reveals a fundamental ideological divergence: whereas De Stijl increasingly pursued universal abstraction and aesthetic autonomy, Beekman remained committed to art’s social function. His return to realism in the early 1920s was therefore not a retreat but a deliberate repositioning, rejecting abstraction in favor of representational strategies capable of addressing lived social realities.
After relocating to Amsterdam in 1926, Beekman responded to the profound political and economic upheavals of the interwar period—the rise of fascism, the formation of the Dutch Communist Party, and the economic devastation precipitated by the stock market crash of 1929. Seeking to reach a broad audience, he abandoned avant-garde experimentation in favor of a clear, accessible realism that foregrounded the dignity and hardship of workers and the unemployed. In doing so, Beekman brought his artistic practice full circle, reaffirming the ethical commitments that had defined his earliest work and positioning himself as a persistent, if often overlooked, voice of social realism within twentieth-century Dutch art.