G.J. (GERARDINE) VAN DE SANDE BAKHUYZEN


Artists

Biography

G.J. (GERARDINE) VAN DE SANDE BAKHUYZEN
1826 Den Haag - 1895 Den Haag

Gerardine van de Sande Bakhuyzen was born into a family of painters and from a young age drew and painted flowers. After he recognised the great talent his daughter Gerardine ( he had several daughters)had her father taught her the techniques of drawing and painting. Her artistic life reads like a feminist emancipatory history in which Gerardine became a professional artist in a time when female amateurism was the rule: she stipulated the price for her works with the art dealers that sold her work, she showed her paintings on exhibitions in Belgium, France and Great Britain and played an active role in the different societies of painters of her day helping them shape the individual possibilities that the end of the 19th century gave them. Gerardines flowers became very popular and remain popular to this day. Her naturalistic way of composition, her elegance in colour and her great eye for detail have given her still lives a universal and timeless quality that is appreciated by many collectors and museums. As a woman, Gerardine was not permitted to paint “en plein air” beyond her own garden gate; she had a large table made in her workshop on which she reproduced the woodland floor for her informal floral compositions thus creating spontaneous arrangements just for that moment: they seem suspended in time. In 1895 Gerardine van de Sande Bakhuizen died at the age of 69. The great painters Jozef Israëls and Hendrik Willem Mesdag spoke at her funeral. Her paintings can be found in the following museums: Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), Gemeentemuseum The Hague, Groninger Museum, Museum Mesdag (The Hague), Centraal Museum (Utrecht),), Teylers Museum (Haarlem), Museum Boymans van Beuningen (Rotterdam) and Kröller-Müller Museum (Otterlo).