“Zuyderzee strand”
A large etching of a cliff (ice age) remnant on the shores of Duch Zuyderzee when it was still a part of the tidal North Sea and before it was closed-off by the Afsluitdijk in 1932. This copy was found in an auction in Germany in 2022. Some years ago an attempt to acquire a large studio folio with many of her etchings, probably left-overs from her personal estate, failed. Sadly they were later sold separately. Living on the edge of the former Zuiderzee, possibly very near the location (Frisian cliff remnants near Staveren) this print, also part of the folio, was on the Wishlist ever since. A coloured version of this etching came to light as well as the preserved original pencil sketch. Read her fascinating short biography to learn more about her life, family and work and her two known students. (Name = button above)
“St. Ignatiuskerk, Rotterdam”
Recently, this large aquatint was acquired. It came from the artist’s personal estate. It shows a rare silhouette of Rotterdam before the old city was destroyed cowardly by German Nazi bombers in 1940. The church survived the bombardment but was demolished in 1967.
Archive
Frederika was a remarkable Dutch artist, most of all a fine etcher. She created landscapes obviously inspired by Rembrandt, portraits (of her mother !) after Whistler, marines and and city-scapes in different techniques and even dared at aquatint etching. Above: a personal selection.
An attempt to catalogue her work is archived here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Frederika_Broeksmit
Living and working in Katwijk on the North Sea she was involved in studying and drawing wild birds and also in the private rescue and rehabilitation of sea birds long before this was more generally accepted and structured.
In her home town, Katwijk, she is known to have had at least one etching student: exentric etcher Johann Windhorst.
gerbrandcaspers@icloud.com
Broeksmit, Frederika Henriette (Charlois 14-08-1875 – 25-01-1945 Bussum)
Painter, etcher, colour etcher and graphic artist. Not known as relief printmaker. Daughter of Dr. Jacob Broeksmit (Meerdervoort, Zwijndrecht 1839-1911 Rotterdam) and Wilhelmina Maria van Peski (1843-1919).
Her ancestral Broeksmit family derives from a 18th century Frederic Broeksmit, Frederika’s paternal great-great grandfather. He came to own (he was probably also involved in international timber trade) the wood sawing mill “de Rietvink” in Meerdervoort (Zwijndrecht) around 1760, which went to his son Jan Cornelis Broeksmit (d. 1819), then to his son Teunis Broeksmit (b.1808) and then to Frederika’s uncle Frederik Broeksmit (b. 1835).
Frederic’s other great-grandson Dr. Jacob Broeksmit, Frederik the millar’s brother) earned his medical degree in 1868 in Leiden University with a study/thesis advocating breast-feeding infants in relation with general health, child development and infant mortality. He had a practise in Zwijndrecht and was a member of the Dutch association against quackery. His family seems to derive from Zierikzee in province Zeeland (timber/wine trade). In the 17th century, a Broeksmit family was living in Appingedam (prov. Groningen). Appingedam at that time was a seaport related to Baltic (timber) trading.
Jacob's brother Dr. Jan Broeksmit was also a doctor, while his other brother Frederik Broeksmit (b. 1835) is recorded following the ancestral line of mill owners and wood & timber merchants. Frederik's son Dr. Teunis Broeksmit (b. Zwijndrecht 1864) also earned a degree as a doctor: also in Leiden in 1891, he worked in Leiden Academic Hospital as an obstetrician.
Her mother’s family originates from 18th century German sea captain Frederick von Peschke (Frederika’s maternal great-great grandfather) from Berlin who married a local Rotterdam girl and started the “van Peski dynasty” in the Netherlands. He was born in Berlin around 1720 and died in Rotterdam 1799.
Studied at Rotterdam and Amsterdam (1899-1902) “Akademie van Beeldende Kunsten”, and Amsterdam “Rijks-normaalschool voor Teekenonderwijs” (1901-1902) to prepare for a career as (school) drawing teacher, which to my knowledge she never pursued. Presumably she was financially independent enough to live a life as free creating artist. She never married. She did however study under the finest artists of their time: August Allebé (1838-1927), Carel Lodewijk Dake (1857-1918), Alexander Maasdijk (1856-1931), Henricus Melis (1845-1923) and Nicolaas van der Waay (1855-1936).
She is known in the village of Katwijk-aan-Zee to have lived in a house named “de Zeeschelp” (the sea shell) where she is said to have pioneered rescuing and revalidating oil-contaminated sea birds*. Today she is a forgotten and obscured artist known by landscape etching obviously inspired by the landscape etches by Rembrandt, harbour scenes and very fine bird portraits. She also etched the portrait of her mother in a Whistler manner.
* It would be recommendable to locally research her pioneering efforts to rescue seabirds and wildlife in the 1920s in Katwijk and also by whom, or in which local archive, this was recorded.
It would possibly promote her to an important role model for modern conservationist organisations. In the small community of Katwijk she perhaps should be commemorated and honoured for her efforts, besides her artistic inheritance recording the village and its surroundings, together with her father's visionary and scientifically awarded influence on infant health as advocate of breast-feeding as early as 1869. The family connections to the well-known Kamerlingh Onnes painter family in Katwijk should do the rest ).
She had a sister Cornelie Broeksmit (Charlois 1873 – 1930 Bourg-la-Reine dep. Seine, Fr.) who was married in 1907 to industrialist and entrepreneur Jacobus Janette Walen (1877-1952). They lived in Bourg-la-Reine since 1917 and had two sons (Frank Janette Walen, a doctor in The Hague, and Robert Jan Walen, a physicist working with the daughter of Marie Curie in Paris. He is said to have owned a Stradivarius violin (address: Rue Fontaine Grelot 5).
After Cornelia's death Walen remarried, in 1931, Elisabeth Maria Kamerlingh Onnes (1897-1955), sister of painter Harm Kamerlingh Onnes (1893-1985), whose father, painter Menso Kamerlingh Onnes (1860-1925), also owned a summer residence villa in Katwijk. They are also known to have been involved in the re-designing of Villa Allegonda (Villa Sigrid), which was rented by German-Norwegian The Hague School painter Gerhard “Morgensjterne” Munthe (1875-1927) with the help of his friend, the famous (“de Stijl”) Dutch architect Jacobus Johannes Pieter (J.J.P.) Oud (1890-1963).
Harm Kamerlingh Onnes (29) sailed Dec. 1922 with his uncle Dolf (Adolf) Kamerlingh Onnes (1864-1933) with SS “Vondel” to the Netherlands Dutch Indies, China and Japan. His uncle was a partner in the administrations firm Kamerlingh Onnes in Medan regulating all kinds of official business and trade from plantations and Nethetland Dutch Indies. His most important clients were the heirs and successors of his friend, the Chinese businessman Tjong A Fie (1860-1921), whose imperium employed some 10.000 people, making him the richest and most influential Chinese trader and landowner in Sumatra. He was bestowed the title “Kapitan Cina” 1911-1921: a prestigious government position, representing all Chinese inhabitants in colonial Netherland Dutch Indies.
She is one of the artists (Mej. (Miss) F.H. Broeksmit) selected and represented with an etching (winter harbour scene in Rotterdam) in the book “Nederlandsche Prentkunst sedert 1900”, by etcher Lodewijk Bosch published in 1928 (“Uitgeverij “de Branding” Utrecht’).
She is mentioned in the 1915 members list of the International Congress of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom as a member of “Genootschap Si vis Pacem para Pacem” (If you want peace, prepare for peace (so not:for war = “para Bellum”- as the original official saying goes) as Mw. Frederika H. Broeksmit, with address”van Vollenhovestraat 19a Rotterdam”.
She is recorded to haven been a teacher to two men, today hardly mentioned:
Maximiliaan (Max) Zomerdijk (Schoorl near Alkmaar 1890 – 1942 Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg). He’d moved to Delft with his family to work as a house painter, and had managed to become a city official. In WW-II he became involved in the resistance and was betrayed, arrested and sentenced to Neuengamme, where he perished. No works are delivered to our times (to my knowledge).
Johan Christoph Windhorst (Schiedam 1884 – 1970), son of a genever (gin) distiller in Schiedam. He sold his 50% share in the family company in 1917 to his brother to pursue a (financially independent) career as a painter-etcher and musician. Several paintings and an etching of a lake with sailing boats are known. He travelled extensively and developed a very personal and interesting painting style but because during his life was reluctant to sell his paintings never became well known and toady is completely, but undeservedly obscured artist.
In 1925 she privately published a poetry album titled “Zeedrijfsel” (Sea floatings) in a numbered edition of 250 using the alias MEGALEEP (263 pages, published by Battelje & Terpstra, Leiden).
Megaleep, the Wandering one”, is the name of the “big woodland caribou of the northern wilderness” figuring in one of the tales by William Joseph Long. It is probably derived from the Maleceet (Milicete) Native American Indian word for caribou.
Edwin Tappan Adney (1868 - 1950):
Artist, writer and consultant on Maliseet culture. He published “Milicete Indian Natural History”. Abstract of the proceedings of the Linnean Society of New York for the year ending March 1, 1893. New York.
Long, William Joseph (North Attleboro, Mass. USA 1867 – 1952)
American writer, naturalist and minister. After his bachelor's degree in 1892 at Harvard University he studied at Andover Theological Seminary and in Europe in Berlin, Paris and Heidelberg, where he earned a doctorate in 1897. He was a fervent naturalist and prolific writer of (children) animal tales. In his time he was more or less officially accused of gross exaggeration and even lying regarding his books and his romanticised, often anthropomorphic stories (bestowing human treats on animals) and reflections therein.
From 1915-1947 his many titles (over 20) with illustrations by Charles Copeland (1858-1945) appeared in Dutch translations.
In June 1980 a commemorative exhibition was held organised by “Genootschap oud Katwijk” with her graphic works. For this occasion a written catalogue resumé of her work was published by print collector and psychologist W. F. (Pim) van Eekelen (1923 1984). Both the exhibition and the catalogue are probably based on his personal collection of prints and documentation of the artist:
“Kunst laaft”. No 5: Tentoonstellingsnummer Frederika H. Broeksmit Juni 1980 ( Katwijk), 1980. Ringband. 18 blz. 4 ingeplakte illustraties. Beredeneerde catalogus: litho's en etsen”.
Dear print lover, passing-by visitor and reader:
While this new gallery-museum site is under construction (being build-up, stocked and arranged) priority must be given to first add all the represented artists in the index with works from the collection and if possible with the examples from the archives.
During construction the site is open to visitors, questions, feedback and suggestions.
Gerrie
gerbrandcaspers@icloud.com
Creutz, Sophus (baptised Frederiksberg, Copenhagen 11-08-1872 - ?)
Painter, photographer and printmaker. Son of Paul Christian Creutz (1835-1892) and Sophie Marie Mortensen (1836 - ?)*.
He had a brother Fritz Ludwig Creutz and a sister Pouline Louise Creutz (1867-1948). His grandfather Friedrich Ludwig Creutz (b. 1789 – after 1845 census) married to Pauline Marie Jacobson, retired as a troop captain in Halderslev Denmark and came as a military from Hannover to Denmark with troop captain (“Rittmeister”) Johann Christian von Düring (1792-1862).
* His mother Sophie Marie Mortenson in genealogical internet databases is mentioned to have died in 1868, which seems controversial but is not impossible with Sophus’ date of baptism.
Mainly known from paintings showing the “Norddeutsche Landschaft” titled: "Finkenwärder Fischerboote" (1938), "Sonniger Tag am Brodener Ufer" (1941), "Bildnis Detlev von Liliencrons". Known by less then a handful of colour woodblock prints. He was befriended with poets Richard Dehmel (1863-1920) and Detlev von Liliencron (1844-1909) who’s portrait he painted and his portrait photograph was used for Liliencron’s 1909 posthumously published book “Letzte Ernte”.
A monochrome print found in America and now in this collection thanks to the help of Tom Clemens in Boston and is titled: “Aus einer nordfranzösischen Kleinstadt” (from a North-French Small city) Vervins 1917. It is probable Creutz was stationed in Vervins in WW-I as a soldier.
The medieval city of Vervins was captured August 30 1918, shortly after WW-I started and during the Great War stayed in German hands until it was liberated Nov.11 1918.
Exhibited in the “Hamburger Kunstverein” and in the Hamborg “Kunsthalle”: 1933, 1938, 1839, 1941.
Literature: Der Neue Rump – “Lexikon der bildenden Künstler Hamburgs, Altonas und der näheren Umgebung”, Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 2005, p.80.
He is not mentioned in any other artist lexicon or in Dresslers KHB.
* M. Creutz, “Königliche Hofphotopgraph”. Hamburg, Altonaerstrasse 2, Ecke Schulterblatt (1898).