Thérèse Schwartze

Biography
1851 - 1918

About the artist

Thérèse Schwartze (20 December 1851 – 23 December 1918), was born on the 20th of December in 185, in Amsterdam.

She was a Dutch portrait painter.and 'een Joffer' . The Joffers from Amsterdam was a group of women artists in Amsterdam who met weekly in the last quarter of the 19th century to paint and show their works together.

They were known for their style that followed the example of the Amsterdam Impressionists, and were all members of the Amsterdam artist societies Arti et Amicitiae and Sint Lucas, and most followed the lessons by professor August Allebé of the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten of Amsterdam.

In 1912, this movement received the name Amsterdamse Joffers by an art critic of Albert Plasschaet . This word was used in a newspaper article. It became a Geuzennaam or reappropriation.

She was the daughter of the painter Johan Georg Schwartze, who grew up in Philadelphia and trained in Düsseldorf.
Schwartze received her first training from her father, before studying for a year at the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten.

She then travelled to Munich and studied under Gabriel Max and Franz von Lenbach. In 1879 she went to Paris to continue her studies under Jean-Jacques Henner. When she returned to Amsterdam she became a member of Arti et Amicitiae.

Her portraits, mostly of Amsterdam's elite, are remarkable for excellent character drawing, breadth and vigour of handling and rich quality of pigment. She signed her works "Th. Schwartze" and was married late in life in 1906 to Anton van Duyl, whereupon she signed works with "Th. v Duyl.Schwartze".

She was one of the few women painters who had been honoured by an invitation to contribute their portraits to the hall of painters at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Some of her best pictures, notably a portrait of Piet J Joubert, and Three Inmates of the Orphanage at Amsterdam, are at the Rijksmuseum, and one entitled Five Amsterdam Orphans at the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.

Her niece Lizzy Ansingh, who she painted a few times, also became a painter. Her sister Georgine Schwartze became a sculptor. She lived with her extended family at Prinsengracht 1091 in Amsterdam and painted her housemates in 1915:

On 22 July 1918 her husband, Anton van Duyl, died. As Schwartze was in bad health at that time (and tried to hide this), the death of her husband was a blow that she could not overcome easily.

She died in Amsterdam on 23 December 1918 from a sudden illness.
Schwartze was buried at Zorgvlied cemetery in Amsterdam. Later she was reburied at the Nieuwe Ooster cemetery in Amsterdam, where her sister created a memorial to her, modelled after her death mask, which is now considered a rijksmonument.

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