Background
Her father, Jacob Eduard van Heemskerck van Beest, was an officer in the Royal Netherlands Navy who also painted seascapes and landscapes.
Her father, Jacob Eduard van Heemskerck van Beest, was an officer in the Royal Netherlands Navy who also painted seascapes and landscapes.
She later took private lessons from two local artists before attending classes at the Royal Academy of Art from 1897 to 1901, where she studied with Ferdinand Hart Nibbrig.
She specialized in landscapes and still-lifes. Her first art lessons came from him. Her first contact with Modern art came in Paris, where she took lessons from Eugène Carrière.
After 1906, she spent her Summers in Domburg, where she came into contact with avant-garde painters such as January Toorop and Piet Mondriaan, who offered her advice.
Around 1911, she was briefly interested in Cubism. In 1913, she attented the "Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon" in Berlin, where she met Walden and started what would be a life-long correspondence.
Thanks to his efforts, her work was popular in Germany, while it remained somewhat ignored in her home country. After 1916, she developed an interest in stained glass windows, designing them for the naval barracks and the Municipal Health Department building in Amsterdam, as well as private residences.
She died suddenly, from an attack of angina.
Both Tak van Poortvliet and Walden mounted exhibitions of her work, in Amsterdam and Berlin respectively. In 2005, a major retrospective was held at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag.