Haarlem does not turn its back on Coba Ritsema

Haarlem,

When 150 years have passed since her birth in Haarlem, the Frans Hals Museum in this city has decided to dedicate a retrospective to Coba Ritsema, a painter who caused a sensation in the Dutch art scene around 1900, and enjoyed early success and international recognition, but who after her death in 1961 fell into gradual oblivion.

Until next March, that center hosts “Coba Ritsema. An eye for color”, its first comprehensive exhibition in a museum, which features paintings from private and public collections, many of them exhibited to the public for the first time in decades. The Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Singer Laren, the Rijksmuseum, the Centraal Museum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam have lent works for the occasion.

Born in 1876 in the city where Hals died, Ritsema asserted her talent around 1900 and, when she was only 23, won the prestigious Willink van Collen Prize for her first exhibition in Amsterdam, together with the Arti et Amicitiae association, a notable achievement for any young artist, male or female, at that time. As a result of that award, her name became known in Europe, she participated in world exhibitions in Paris and Brussels, as well as the Venice Biennale, and critics hailed her, between warmth and reticence, as one of the most important female artists in the Netherlands. Queen Wilhelmina granted him the title of knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1935, but, as we said, his fame declined after his death in the sixties.

Coba Ritsema. An Eye for Colour. Frans Hals Museum Haarlem

This exhibition, in addition to recovering her for the general public – it has been seventy-five years since the Frans Hals Museum dedicated a monograph to her – aims to dismantle some persistent myths surrounding her career. The first has to do with her references: Ritsema was described for many years as a student of George Hendrik Breitner, but new research has confirmed – and in fact she herself stated this in an interview – that she was not his disciple. Although Breitner visited her studio and offered her advice, she apparently felt that she was too expert to offer her teachings.

The assumption that she must have studied with him, curator Maaike Rikhof argues, reflects historiographical trends that tended to relegate female artists to the background of their male counterparts; although it should also be noted that it is likely that Ritsema saw several exhibitions of Breitner’s work in Amsterdam around 1900, and his series Girls in kimono inspired some of his paintings of young women depicted on their backs or reclining on a couch.

Another of the clichés to beat in the exhibition, taking into account Rikhof’s theses, is that this marginalization of Ritsema over the decades had to do with a weak quality. This author mainly produced portraits and still lifes, genres prone to small format and considered appropriate for women painters, a label that came to overshadow the good reception they initially garnered and also the professional networks that this artist built.

In reality, his compositions are anything but modest. These portraits—which often capture young women seen from the back or absorbed in their thoughts—convey a discreet yet evident psychological charge, while his still lifes are made with loose, confident brushstrokes that appear spontaneous, but are carefully studied. Subtle changes of green and blue tones dominate its palette, generating a feeling of balance and sobriety that is still surprisingly modern today.

Thanks to recently discovered archival material, several of Ritsema’s recurring models have also been identified for the exhibition, basing these works on his relationships and daily life. They included her Amsterdam neighbor Leentje van Bueren, her childhood friend Marie van den Arend, and Elisabeth Berthold, who appears in The young woman in white (around 1925).

In short, “Coba Ritsema. An eye for color” wants to draw attention to the artistic voices, male or female, that were relegated to the background for reasons unrelated to their good work – despite the fact that in their time they sometimes succeeded, and under their own terms – and to how much richer the history of art can become when those voices are finally heard.

The Frans Hals Museum is not the accidental home of this project: in addition to dedicating an individual to him in the middle of the last century, it is known that Ritsema visited it regularly, that Hals’ paintings were also a source of inspiration for her and that, on a postcard, she referred to him as “the most brilliant man in Haarlem.”

This affinity is particularly evident in his portraits: clothing and backgrounds are painted lightly, faces with detail. Draped fabrics, like those of Hals, are also often part of his canvases. And critics recognized these parallels; Iohan Quirijn van Regteren Altena wrote in 1946: In his desire for the most sober expression, he sometimes suddenly resembled Frans Hals.