1876 The Hague – 1923 Domburg
ZEICHNUNG NR. 33 [The Bridge]
ink on paper, 629 x 478 mm
signed lower right: JvH
date: 1915
provenance:
with Kunsthandel Wending, Amsterdam, 1981;
artist Reinier Lucassen (1939-2025), The Netherlands;
The Lucassen Collection, Venduehuis, The Hague, 24 April 2024, lot 74.
exhibited:
– Berlin, Galerie Der Sturm, Hundertzweite Ausstellung: Jacoba van Heemskerck,
Gemälde und Aquarelle, November 1921, no 30;
– Berlin, Galerie Der Sturm, Hundertneunundzwanzigste Ausstellung: Jacoba van
Heemskerck, Gedächtnis-Ausstellung, March 1924, no. 41;
– Amsterdam, Kunsthandel Wending, Jacoba van Heemskerck, 1981.
literature:
– Der Sturm Magazine, volume XII, no. 9, 1921, illustrated on the cover;
– Sturm-Bilderbuch vol. VII 1924, reprint Kunsthandel Wending, Amsterdam 1981;
– A.H. Huussen jr., J.F.A. van Paaschen-Louwerse, Jacoba van Heemskerck van Beest,
Schilderes uit roeping, Zwolle, 2005, cat. no. 256.
The composition presents an abstracted landscape in black ink tones on a light ground, constructed through forceful, broad brushstrokes that rhythmically structure the pictorial surface. In the harmonious combination of organic and straight lines recognizable elements can be discerned: vertical forms topped with rounded shapes suggest trees, a curved structure evokes a drawbridge, and elongated, rounded forms recall boats on the water. These motifs are highly simplified and integrated into a dynamic interplay of diagonals, spirals, and flowing lines. The absence of depth and perspective emphasizes the flatness of the composition, in which the landscape is reduced to an abstract ordering of line, rhythm, and movement.
fig. 1 Der Sturm Magazine, volume XII, no. 9, 1921
Jacoba van Heemskerck’s Zeichnung no. 33 was published on the cover of the journal Der Sturm in 1921 (fig. 1). Founded in Berlin in 1910 by Herwarth Walden, Der Sturm operated as a monthly, multidisciplinary journal that brought together visual art, literature, poetry, music, and art theory, and played a crucial role in shaping and disseminating modernist ideas across Europe, Russia, and the United States. Closely associated with Galerie Der Sturm, the journal featured leading artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and Paul Klee, alongside Van Heemskerck. She appeared on the cover of Der Sturm more frequently than any other artist associated with the Sturm circle, reflecting her exceptional standing within Walden’s extensive modernist network.
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. Two years later, during the First World War, Van Heemskerck made this drawing. At this time, the influential Berlin art dealer Herwarth Walden, founder of the gallery Der Sturm, had become a close friend and held exclusive rights to sell her work and played a decisive role in positioning her within the international avant-garde.
Zeichnung no. 33 is a compelling example of Van Heemskerck’s close alignment with the spiritual and intellectual ambitions of the Der Sturm circle, in which abstraction was understood as a means of accessing non-material realities and expressing art’s transformative potential. Drawing on theosophical ideas, Van Heemskerck conceived abstraction not as a rejection of nature, but as a distillation of its underlying spiritual structures and universal principles.
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 exposed her to progressive artistic currents and encouraged an early departure from academic naturalism. Her work was exhibited 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, and 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.
Despite significant international recognition during her lifetime, her work was received ambivalently in the Netherlands, 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 by Jacqueline van Paaschen 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.