Jacoba van Heemskerck was a Dutch stained glass designer and graphic artist. She worked in several modern genres and specialized in landscapes and still-lifes. She represented the art movement of Expressionism.
Background
Van Heemskerck was born in Den Haag, Netherlands, on January 4, 1876. She was the daughter of Jacob Eduard van Heemskerck van Beest, an officer in the Royal Netherlands Navy who was also a painter of seascapes and landscapes. She had five siblings, among them was her sister Lucie van Heemskerck.
Education
Jacoba van Heemskerck received her first art lessons from her father. She then took private lessons from two local artists before attending classes at the Royal Academy of Art, the Hague, between 1897 and 1901. There she studied with Ferdinand Hart Nibbrig, one of the first artists who introduced luminism to the Netherlands.
As Picasso, Munch, and Matisse had done, van Heemskerck studied at the studio of Eugène Carrière in Paris. It was there that she became connected with the latest developments in modern art.
Career
Van Heemskerck lived in France until 1904. Then she began to live with her sister, Lucie, and was introduced to the art collector, Marie Tak van Poortvliet. She became her lifelong friend and later built a studio for Jacoba van Heemskerck in the garden of her home. Besides, Tak van Poortvliet had extensive contact with the Dutch avant-garde. In the course of this period, she assembled an impressive art collection, including works of such artists as Fernand Léger, Franz Marc, and Wassily Kandinsky.
After 1906 Jacoba van Heemskerck spent her summers in Domburg, where she got acquainted with avant-garde painters, including Jan Toorop and Piet Mondriaan. Their artistic evolution was very similar: both artists were influenced around 1910 by modern movements like Luminism and Cubism, they worked together in Domburg and more than once they painted the same subject. However, whereas Mondrian’s artistic approach eventually became geometrical, Van Heemskerck’s developed into an open, unconstrained and intuitive style.
Soon, van Heemskerck became involved in Anthroposophy, likely due to the influence of her former teacher, Nibbrig, who was a Theosophist. Some time later she became a follower of Der Sturm. It was an avant-garde art magazine founded by Herwarth Walden. Although she was never to abandon the representation of the real world, her style was eventually so abstract that her subjects became almost unrecognizable.
She exhibited at the Berlin Expressionist gallery Der Sturm every year from 1913 until her death. There she met Walden and started what would be a lifelong correspondence. Thanks to his efforts and help, her artworks became popular in Germany, but it remained ignored in her native country.
Around 1916 van Heemskerck developed an interest in stained glass windows. She produced them for the naval barracks and the Municipal Health Department building in Amsterdam, as well as private residences. From 1922 Jacoba van Heemskerck lived in Domburg with Marie Tak van Poortvliet, her old friend and patron.