JACOBA VAN HEEMSKERCK
1876 The Hague – 1923 Domburg
COMPOSITION
linocut in black on laid paper, image size: 299 x 401 mm
signed lower left: Jacoba van Heemskerck
date: 1921
provenance:
private collection, Germany;
Modern Kunst Auction, Galerie Gerda Bassenge, Berlin, May 31st 2025, lot 8059.
literature:
- Bauhaus Drucke. Neue europäische Graphik. Deutsche Künstler. III. Bauhausmappe. Potsdam, 1922, print no. 6;
- A.H. Huussen jr., J.F.A. van Paaschen-Louwerse, Jacoba van Heemskerck 1876 – 1923: Eine expressionistische Künstlerin. The Hague, 1983: no. 72;
- A. M. Peters, Jacoba van Heemskerck van Beest 1876–1923, Amsterdam, 1983, III-6;
- Söhn, Gerhard. Jacoba van Heemskerck: Handzeichnungen und Druckgraphik, Köln, 1993, 103-6;
- A.H. Huussen jr., J.F.A. van Paaschen-Louwerse, Jacoba van Heemskerck van Beest, Schilderes uit roeping, Zwolle, 2005, cat. no. 340.
This abstract composition, created in black ink tones against a light background, is structured by heavy black lines that rhythmically define the pictorial surface. The absence of depth and perspectival space emphasizes the flatness of the composition. The subject is reduced to an intriguing abstract interplay of line, rhythm, and movement. In many respects, this print occupies a distinctive position within Jacoba van Heemskerck’s graphic oeuvre. It belongs to the final group of works she produced and differs from most of her prints in that the composition is fully abstract.
Van Heemskerck exhibited eight woodcuts at the graphic arts exhibition in Domburg in the summer of 1921. The physical strain of intensive carving caused rheumatic issues in her fingers, which likely prompted her to abandon the demanding technique of woodcut in favor of the softer medium of linoleum. This transition, made in the final phase of her career, is reflected in the more fluid, continuous quality of the lines that characterize this work.
The year 1921 marked the artist’s last journey abroad. In October she visited the Bauhaus with her partner Marie Tak van Poortvliet and received the prestigious invitation—exceptional for a Dutch female artist—to contribute to the Bauhaus-Album, a compilation of prints by mostly German artists. She submitted the present work which was published in 1922 as print no. 6 in III. Bauhausmappe: Bauhaus Drucke. Neue europäische Graphik. Deutsche Künstler.
From the early stages of her career, Van Heemskerck was familiar with graphic media. Ferdinand Hart Nibbrig, from whom she received part of her training, and Eugène Carrière, with whom she studied in Paris, were both accomplished printmakers, particularly strong in making lithographs.
Around 1914, Van Heemskerck began to explore printmaking independently, developing a sustained engagement with the woodcut technique. This interest coincided with a broader revival of the medium among German avant-garde artists in the early twentieth century. Her graphic oeuvre comprises approximately forty-five works, the majority printed in black ink; some impressions were later hand-colored with watercolor. The extend of Van Heemskerck’s graphic works is to date largely undocumented. However, in this instance the number of impressions is known, as the print was published by the Bauhaus in an edition of one hundred and ten impressions.
Van Heemskerck’s international success was received ambivalently in the Netherlands, where her work was often viewed critically and at times with a measure of resentment. Within the Dutch art world of the early twentieth century, she occupied an exceptional position as a strong and independent woman—openly homosexual and radically modern in outlook—who stood apart from prevailing artistic and social norms. Contemporary Dutch art criticism was largely conservative and, when modernist tendencies were acknowledged, tended to privilege developments in France over those emerging from Germany. The visual language of German modernism, with its pronounced contour lines and expressive structural emphasis—formal qualities central to Van Heemskerck’s work—contributed significantly to its uneasy reception in her home country.
Jacoba van Heemskerck was the most successful Dutch female avant-garde artist of the early twentieth century. Born into an aristocratic family in The Hague as the daughter of the painter Jacob Eduard van Heemskerck van Beest, she received a rigorous academic training at the Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague. Formative periods in the artists’ colony in Het Gooi and in Paris at the Académie Eugène Carrière further exposed her to progressive artistic currents and encouraged an early departure from academic naturalism. She exhibited her work in Paris, signaling an ambition to operate beyond a purely national context. Persistent health concerns, however, forced her to return to the Netherlands in 1904.
Central to Van Heemskerck’s artistic independence was the support of her lifelong partner, Marie Tak van Poortvliet, whose financial autonomy, intellectual engagement, and commitment to modern art enabled the artist to pursue an uncompromising trajectory. Anthroposophy played a defining role in the lives and thinking of both women: Van Heemskerck joined the Theosophical Society in 1910, followed by Tak van Poortvliet in 1912.Their shared spiritual convictions profoundly informed the artist’s conception of abstraction and artistic purpose.
In 1908, Tak van Poortvliet had Villa Loverendale built in Domburg, including a studio for Van Heemskerck. The coastal climate during the summer months proved beneficial to the artist’s fragile health, while Domburg itself developed into a center of artistic innovation in the Netherlands. There, within a progressive circle that included Piet Mondrian, Van Heemskerck engaged intensively with questions of spirituality and the abstraction of nature.
Jacoba van Heemskerck’s artistic career gained decisive momentum in 1913, when she was invited to participate in the Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon in Berlin, a landmark exhibition of the international avant-garde. The influential Berlin art dealer Herwarth Walden, founder of the gallery Der Sturm, became a close friend and soon after held exclusive rights to sell her work. He played a decisive role in positioning her with success within the international European avant-garde.
Despite significant international recognition during her lifetime, where it was often regarded as overly aligned with German modernism. After the Second World War, this perception—reinforced by anti-German sentiment and the structural marginalization of women artists—contributed to her relative absence from canonical art-historical narratives. Her early death in 1923 further curtailed her ability to consolidate her position.
Recent scholarship has reaffirmed Van Heemskerck’s importance as a pioneering female artist of early abstraction, whose oeuvre exemplifies the transnational character of modernism and the close interrelation between spirituality and artistic innovation.