Education
Leiden University.
Leiden University.
She was amongst the earliest feminists. During the first part of her life Wil van Gogh served her family and others, nursing the sick. There she engaged in the committee to organise the "National exhibition of women"s work" (Nationale Tentoonstelling van Vrouwenarbeid), 1898.
This was a highly successful enterprise and funds raised from the exhibition, 20,000 Dutch Guilders, served to establish the Dutch national bureau for women"s work.
Number sources record what happened, but on 4 December 1902 Wil van Gogh was interned and later transferred to the House Veldwijk, a psychiatric institution at Ermelo. The diagnosis of dementia praecox, on which this measure was based, was at the time considered a fatal illness.
Asylum records later noted:
Wil van Gogh remained at Ermelo for almost four decades before she died. Whether she was mentally ill or not is nowadays difficult to prove.
Renate Berger asserts that Wil van Gogh shared the fate of many "sisters of well-known men" at the time.