Ode to Lenie Verbrugge | You are allowed to be who you are!

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Lenie, a muse

Lenie Verbrugge-Jagerman (1931 - 2017) was a real Amsterdam woman, born in the Jordaan and died in Osdorp. With her large, sturdy body, she was a muse to many artists.

Lucie Nijland, my former sculpture teacher, had made a sculpture of her and it stood in the studio where I had lessons. The other day, someone from my sculpture club sent a picture of the same sculpture but now on display at the Havixhorst sculpture park near Meppel. Through the responses that follow on the app, I read that there are many people who knew Lenie as a model during the model drawing at the Rietveld Academy and from the clay model lessons.

That made me curious to know more about her.

‘Even sleeping she posed with grandeur,’ is the headline of the obituary (NRC of 22 July 2017) as Lenie died at the age of 86. In it, I read that there was an exhibition on Lenie at the Trade Union Museum in Amsterdam in September 2003. The initiator was Kris Spinhoven. It must have been overwhelming for her. Lenie had been a model for 50 years by then.

As many as 50 artists showed her sturdy figure: in paint, charcoal or stone, dressed or nude, young or at an advanced age. The painter Vera Jongejan says in a fold-out sheet accompanying the exhibition: ‘Lenie is a real person, not an ideal image. It is nice that someone dares to be herself at a time when young, slim and beautiful is the norm’ And according to Kris Spinhoven: ’If you saw her standing at the bus stop, she did not stand out at all. But in the studio, a transformation took place. Then suddenly there was that grandeur, that look you could look at for hours and hours. Lenie could claim the space when she posed.’

In a filmed interview by Nora Hooijer and Rik Lodewijk, Lenie tells of responding as a teenager to an ad from an artist looking for a model. From that painter, the 30-year-old Willem Verbrugge, she first became a model and later a wife. In the marriage, Lenie was the breadwinner.

She posed at the Rietveld Academy and Rijksacademie in Amsterdam, at the art academies in den Haag, den Bosch and Breda, and for countless artists who, individually or in groups, wanted to ‘get or keep a grip on the human body’.

Even after her fiftieth anniversary, Lenie continued to model. For Kris Spinhoven, she was something of a muse for 20 years. 'It was interesting to see her getting older, as process to paint.  Her hair got whiter, she got more and more wrinkles, became smaller and more fragile.’

Lenie showed that every body is beautiful at any age. That is an important message. Especially today when beauty seems to be manufacturable and for sale, and young girls feel hugely insecure about their looks due to ideal images on social media. For that reason alone, Lenie deserves this tribute. You are allowed to be who you are!