Lizzy Ansingh

Vocation

Dutch painter, a prominent member of the female post-impressionist painter movement "The Amsterdam Joffers". The "Joffers" (Misses) were typically single independent ladies from rich Amsterdam "Grachtengordel" families that had no need to paint for bread. Her father was a pharmacist and her mother was a painter, but she was stimulated to painting by her aunt the portrait painter Thérèse Schwartze (b.20 dec 1851) with whom she spend some 16 years (1892-1908). She visited the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten Amsterdam from 1893 to 1897, where she learned the art of classic painting and met other Joffers. Her aunt introduced her to the Dutch art world: poets, writers, painters like George Breitner (1858-1923) and Isaac Israëls (1865-1934) and the necessary clients. She first mainly painted portraits but since 1900 - unique for her - seemingly living dolls, that became actors in an allegorical and symbolic world. She was very religious. One series of doll paintings got the title the seven deadly sins that she created in 1914. As a person she was capricious and impulsive, but in her work she was a romantic dreamer: She lived in an idealised past and tried to ban out the bad and banal outer world from her work. She also wrote poems and two children's books which were published in 1955. She never married, but choose for her career. She had a very active social life in Amsterdam artistic circles like "Arti et Amicitiae" and Sint Lucas and the Pulchri Studio in The Hague. She died 14 December 1959 in Amsterdam . Link to Wikepedia biograhy