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Lot Essay
Important for the development of Jacoba van Heemskerck's artistic career were the summers she spent in the house of her lifelong friend and maecenas Marie Tak van Poortvliet in Domburg. During her first summer there, in 1908 she met colleague artists Jan Sluijters, Jan Toorop, Else Berg, Charley Toorop, Piet Mondriaan and Lodewijk Schelfhout, of whom especially the latter two would have a very stong influence on her early works. In this period she, as did many fellow artists, developed an interest in theosophy and antroposophy. In the winter of 1909 and 1910 Mondriaan tutored Jacoba van Heemskerck. Although there are only few works of this period known, they all show a clear luminist character.
In 1911 the Dutch Parisian artist Lodewijk Schelfhout contributed several cubist paintings to the exhibition of the artist society De Moderne Kunstkring in Amsterdam. Like many of her Dutch contemporaries, these works must have made a great impression on Jacoba van Heemskerck. From this moment on her work shows strong influences of Cubism. Although Cubism was popular in The Netherlands for only a few years, it played an important role in determining the direction to which modern art in Holland was going.
Her Cubist period was short lived and even though the works show similarities with the works of Mondriaan and Schelfhout, Van Heemskerck clearly developed her own style. The present lot can be seen as the culmination of this development. While her early Cubist works (1913) can be characterized by tonal colors and a fragmented play of line, the works from around 1913-1914 show a style with clear colourfields divided by black straight lines and angles.
Dating Van Heemskerck's work is always somewhat speculative; she never dated her paintings, neither did she leave any writings on her work that could help in this process. This lack of written art theory by her hand makes it difficult to determine the influence that her theosophical interest had on this work. Due to the writings of Marie Tak van Poortvliet we know that the theosophical colour and form theories played an important role in Jacoba van Heemskerck's work; however analyzing the work on basis of these theories only would be more than speculative, it would harm the esthetic creation of the artist.
The present lot can be seen as one of her more analytical works, with a reference to natural elements it shows no fluent and organic lines: all elements have been reduced to the Cubist shapes and the perspective is reduced to a minimum. It can therefore be considered as one of the highlights in Dutch Cubism. As Geurt Imanse once stated: 'Besides Mondriaan and Van Heemskerk, no Dutch artist got to the bottom of Cubism as it was developed by Picasso and Braque' (Geurt Imanse in: Van Gogh tot Cobra, Amsterdam Utrecht, 1981)
In 1911 the Dutch Parisian artist Lodewijk Schelfhout contributed several cubist paintings to the exhibition of the artist society De Moderne Kunstkring in Amsterdam. Like many of her Dutch contemporaries, these works must have made a great impression on Jacoba van Heemskerck. From this moment on her work shows strong influences of Cubism. Although Cubism was popular in The Netherlands for only a few years, it played an important role in determining the direction to which modern art in Holland was going.
Her Cubist period was short lived and even though the works show similarities with the works of Mondriaan and Schelfhout, Van Heemskerck clearly developed her own style. The present lot can be seen as the culmination of this development. While her early Cubist works (1913) can be characterized by tonal colors and a fragmented play of line, the works from around 1913-1914 show a style with clear colourfields divided by black straight lines and angles.
Dating Van Heemskerck's work is always somewhat speculative; she never dated her paintings, neither did she leave any writings on her work that could help in this process. This lack of written art theory by her hand makes it difficult to determine the influence that her theosophical interest had on this work. Due to the writings of Marie Tak van Poortvliet we know that the theosophical colour and form theories played an important role in Jacoba van Heemskerck's work; however analyzing the work on basis of these theories only would be more than speculative, it would harm the esthetic creation of the artist.
The present lot can be seen as one of her more analytical works, with a reference to natural elements it shows no fluent and organic lines: all elements have been reduced to the Cubist shapes and the perspective is reduced to a minimum. It can therefore be considered as one of the highlights in Dutch Cubism. As Geurt Imanse once stated: 'Besides Mondriaan and Van Heemskerk, no Dutch artist got to the bottom of Cubism as it was developed by Picasso and Braque' (Geurt Imanse in: Van Gogh tot Cobra, Amsterdam Utrecht, 1981)