HEEMSKERCK VAN BEEST, JACOBA BERENDINA VAN

(1876–1923)

Painter. She was instructed in painting by her father and studied at the Academy of Arts in The Hague. In 1904, van Heemskerck studied in Paris with Eugene Carriere (1849–1906). Al though she lived in The Hague, she stayed every year with her friend and patron Marie Tak van Poortvliet (1871–1936) in the bathing re sort of Domburg (in the province of Zeeland). There she met Jan Toorop and Piet Mondrian. Under the influence of Wassili Kandin ski and the anthroposophical ideas of Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), she developed a personal abstract style. Berlin, rather than Paris, be came her artistic mecca, where she became friends with Herwarth Walden (1878–1941), the director of the Sturm Gallery, exhibiting in the Erste Deutsche Herbst Salon in 1913. She was also inspired by contacts with German architects such as Bruno Taut and Hans Hildebrand. After World War I, van Heemskerck began designing stained-glass windows. Aselection of her letters to Walden has been published by Herbert Henkels and Arend H. Huussen Jr. (Jacoba van Heemskerck, eine expressionistische Kunstlerin, 1983) and a biogra phy and catalogue by Huussen and Jacqueline F. A. van Paaschen Louwerse (Jacoba van Heemskerck van Beest (1876–1923): Schilderes uit roeping, 2005).