Ode to Alida Withoos | Ode to Alida Withoos

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Dear Alida, where have you been?

How are you doing? I was recently at the Hortus Medicus here in Amsterdam. There I was able to admire the beautiful Moninckx atlas, that collection of over 420 watercolors in nine books of flowers. You also contributed to that with thirteen drawings. What extraordinary plants you painted for it! Especially those South African succulents you rendered well in watercolor. They seem to be alive on the smooth parchment. Even though they are not beautiful flowering plants at all. So special all those unknown species too. What a marvel nature is in her richness!

I like to think back to your beautiful childhood years in Amersfoort. Your father taught you to paint there together with your three older brothers. You had to flee from the French soldiers there in the disaster year of 1672. Your father was afraid they would attack his daughters like locusts. And how much success you all then had in Hoorn painting flowers. They called your work 'Whiteoosjes'. Just one plant painted in watercolor on a sheet of paper or parchment was a true flower portrait. Or as a fierce bouquet in oil on paintings of forest still lifes with the most beautiful flowers from all seasons. The forest still lifes your father made were your model. In the foreground rustled creepy crawlies, insects, mice, snakes and lizards. And then in the background you had painted those Italian landscapes. Italy, the mecca of painting where your father had been around 1650 to complete his training as a painter. A trip that was not a possibility for you as a woman. But still you made those beautiful paintings.

You were proud of them, too. I can still see that now by how firmly you signed your own work. It was not a hobby like some rich women practiced painting. You made money out of it, not many women could match you.

When your father could no longer work because of his painful gout, you helped with the income. Your brothers left Hoorn and went their separate ways. You spent most time with Pieter. He lived in Amsterdam and mainly drew birds. Together you made several drawings for the Amsterdam merchant's wife Agnes Block. In the summer she lived at her country estate Vijverhof, on the Vecht near Breukelen. There she collected and cultivated plants from all over the world. Agnes was also the first in Europe to grow a ripe pineapple fruit. With it, she proudly had herself portrayed on a silver coin as a Dutch goddess Flora. And you were given the honor of drawing that pineapple “after nature” for her as proof in 1687.

I understand that a whole group of artists worked for Agnes, including Maria Sibylla Merian. At Agnes' request, she even drew another Akelei species on your Akelei drawing. What an interesting lady that is, say!  Did she tell you of her trip to Suriname where she studied, described and drew the life cycle from caterpillar to butterfly in the most beautiful watercolors. She saw man on earth as a caterpillar emerging into a butterfly in heaven.

I'm quite a bit jealous of you. You got such an interesting life and circle of acquaintances because of your watercolors. Your oil paintings you made mostly in your father's studio in Hoorn. However, with your watercolors you came to the most interesting places in our country.  There the newly discovered plants were cultivated that had been brought in from other parts of the world by the Dutch East India Company. Whole worlds opened up to us, and you were there and recorded it on paper.

I do worry a little about you these days. I hear little and see none of your work since you married Andries, a fine painter, just like you. You were already almost forty, too old to have children. Since your father died in 1703 you have lived permanently in Amsterdam. Do you now work in the studio of Andries and his family? And what kind of work do you make, because I can't find anything about that. Glad you do have more security in your existence now! But I wonder what are you doing with your life on the Prinsengracht now, are you happy, are you still painting?

Liesbeth Missel