The seventeenth-century Holland and Flanders showed a great demand and popularity for still life paintings. In fact, it was so popularised and respected that it overpassed the demand for still-life art in France, which is why several women specialized in it. One of the women artists, who became an international celebrity in this genre was Rachel Ruysch. In many cases, the women artists of Holland and Flanders were represented better in the exhibitions than their French contemporaries. It also happened because of more signed works by them but in the case of their French contemporaries, a handful of the works survived, or should I say that in fewer cases, it was just one. But that is not the complete case; although there is an impressive list of women artists by historians who were famous at that time (belonging to different regions), which includes Margareta Haverman, Anna Maria Janssens, Judith Leyster, Maria Sibylla Merian, Jacoba Maria van Nickelen, Maria van Oosterwijck, Clara Peeters, Helene Rouers, etc, only a few of them will be a subject of further research. Talking about Holland, several women artists underwent their training under other male contemporaries like Haverman with Jan van Huysum, Rachel Ruysch, and Margaretha de Heer with Willem van Aelst, etc. This itself tells that there was a keen participation of women artists in Holland, with a break in the limiting tradition of the family training of women. This was the reason why painting was an exceedingly competitive profession in seventeenth-century Holland, and there remained some of the finest women artists but not everyone received the recognition they deserved. Among them, Rachel and Maria van Oosterwijck got all the recognition they deserved, but a few excellent women artists still disappeared in the fog. One of them who is an excellent still life or flower painter but forgotten, which we are going to discuss in this article, is Margaretha Haverman. Let’s start.
Margaretha Haverman | Fast Knowledge
Margaretha Haverman is a Dutch Flower artist who was the only known student of Jan van Huysum. Being a significant artist, she had little to scarce works, and her name has been primarily survived through literature through Van Huysum.
Artist Abstract: Margaretha Haverman.
Born in Breda in 1693, Margaretha Haverman studied under the notorious flower painter, Jan van Huysum. She married an architect, Jacques de Mondoteguy. Being elected member of Académie Royale, Paris, in 1722, she was expelled in the following year because the Academy decided that her Moreau de reception was painted by her teacher, Jan van Huysum. However, this was not the case as she had very few known signed works, and the 1716 work that she submitted to the Paris Salon showed that she mastered Huysum’s exquisitely detailed manner, and certainly, it was not a substitute for Huysum’s works. Furthermore, Huysum was a jealous and suspicious man, who had no other students because he feared that his secret techniques in art might get leaked or stolen.
| Artist | Margaretha Haverman |
| Birth | 1693, Breda |
| Death | Unknown |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Genre | Flower paintings |
| Period | Dutch Golden Age |
| Famous Paintings | Vase of Flowers, 1716 |
Looking at the Life of the Artist.
There are little to scarce details of her life, as her works and her name majorly survived due to the vast literature on the flower painter Jan van Huysum. In fact, the first biographer to give a lengthy detail on Haverman is Jan van Gool, but he also didn’t record her first name. He described Haverman as a pleasant and lively young daughter of a schoolmaster, who lived in Amsterdam around 1700. He further noted that Haverman’s father was acquainted with Van Huysum in Amsterdam, and he successfully convinced Van Huysum to accept his daughter as a pupil even though the artist never wanted any pupils.
The later writers credit Van Huysum’s uncle and not her father for having arranged Margaretha’s instruction with him. As a student of Van Huysum’s, she used to copy her work, worked with nature, and also produced flower pieces that were free interpretations of his style. Now, at what time Haverman studied with him is not recorded, but since Haverman was able to master Van Huysum’s style, it can be assumed that she might have studied with him over a long period of years.
Van Huysum used to regularly devise reasons for getting rid of her and finally, he found an excuse to dismiss her after she committed an uncertain misdeed. There is little information on her life during this time.
By 21 January 1722, Haverman became a member of the notoriously chauvinistic Académie Royale as she lived in Paris and married an architect, Jacques de Mondoteguy. Being admitted by a unanimous vote on the previously completed flower and fruit piece, she was expelled from the Academy in the following year. Now various writers have given reason that she was accused of passing off a work by Van Huysum as her own but the accusation was false.
Nothing is known for certain about the artist’s life after her expulsion from the Academy. Van Gool alluded to this expulsion in the vaguest of terms,
“a case that threw her household into ruin.”
Kramm also commented that she completed or finished some of Van Huysum’s drawings after his death in 1749, which seems unlikely. Whereas, other writers like Mitchell, Greer, and White claimed that she enjoyed wealthy patronage in Paris but there is no surety about it.
According to Kramm, the artist was alive in 1750 and some of the other 20th century writers like Grant, White, and Greer say that she died in 1795 but again, this is unlikely as had she lived the advanced age of 102, the fact would have gain notice of people and might have been recorded.
Hence, there is little to no information on the artist’s life. But we can certainly look at her works which are known today to gain a little more perspective on her.
Briefly Learning About the Paintings of Margaretha Haverman.
There are only two works by Margaretha Haverman which is known today. One of them is a signed and undated, flower piece on canvas which lies in the Statens Museum for Kunst Copenhagen. The artwork depicts a mixed bouquet of summer flowers in a vase upon a brown-stone table against a darker background. The artist put her signature “M. Haverman Fec” over it on the lower right edge of the table. The bouquet consists of different large blossoms tightly packed into a vertical column that gestures to the right, illuminated from the left. Along the linear mid-section of this arrangement, she displayed insects- ants on an open hollyhock and a red butterfly on a rose. The artist added drama by achieving heightened three-dimensionality in this artwork.
The artwork features greater similarities to the flower paintings that Jan van Huysum produced in 1710-14, particularly a bouquet (1710, National Gallery of London). However, it must be noted that Haverman’s design is more deliberate in the way it highlights the flowers to form a rigid row in the composition, making it not a verbatim copy of Van Huysum’s work.
Another painting of Haverman has the inscription, “Margareta Haverman fecit/A/1716” at the lower edge of the canvas and is the artist’s only signed and dated artwork. The painting shows a tall, showy bouquet of different ranges of flowers and growing seasons standing in a footed ornamental urn on a ledge inside a niche. There is a grouping of red and white grapes and a peach with a twig to the right. The construction of the artwork is complex as different delicate flowers and grasses fill the arrangement and soften the edges with a counterbalance of the denser flowers. The tonality is in brightened form whereas the palette has taken a bluish cast. Further, there is a light illuminating this bouquet from the left as it bounces off the right side of the niche. Now, this artwork was subject to questioning as it was painted in Van Huysum’s later manner and the third digit of the date is partially obliterated “5” but The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s conservators found the signature and date of 1716 in the old paint layer.
Different French, Dutch, and German sales catalogs contain paintings by Margaretha Haverman. This includes; Pieter Testas the Younger, Diderick Smith, a friend of van Huysum, Baron de Faviers, a senior army officer, Louis Fould, Edouard Fould, etc. but none of the artworks show the artistic method of the artist. In addition to this, the annotations reveal that her work was generally sold for sums comparable to the middle-range Van Huysum’s.
Margaretha Haverman used wood and canvas supports for her paintings, ranging in size from 40 x 32 to 79 x 60.5 centimeters, and in two instances, she might have produced pendant still lifes. Further, she also painted floral bouquets in glass and ornamental vases with baskets and marble tabletops on a plain dark background. Occasionally, she placed fruits on the ledge of the bouquet. In fact, the depiction of fruits and other arrangements against garden settings and light backgrounds was the classic style of Van Huysum after 1720.
Final Words.
Margaretha Haverman has few known paintings, which is why it is extremely difficult to determine her development as a painter or to identify a particular stylistic characteristic, which sets her apart from Van Huysum. What I felt is that Margaretha probably hid under the oeuvre of Jan van Huysum, which is why there is not much known about her. Hence, there must be a complete art-historical evaluation of the artist so that we know her more. By her achievements, it is obvious that she was really talented and was not famous at that time at the mere mercy of Van Huysum, but there is an unfinished journey; a journey to carefully learn about her work so that her oeuvre can be constructed substantially again. Tell me what you think about her in the comments below.
Resources.
- Dictionary of Women Artists by Delia Gaze.
- Women Artists: 1550-1950 by Ann Sutherland and Linda Nochlin Harris.
- Featured Image: Still Life by Margaretha Haverman; Margaretha Haverman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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