Ode to Betsy Westendorp-Osieck | ‘There is something of the fabric of butterfly wings over her best works’

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Dear Betsy,

Every day I cycle along Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, but since I wrote my master's thesis on you, these streets have come to life even more. With the sun in my face, I cycle on my black granny bike and fantasise about how you as an artist observed life on the streets. Once I peered through the windows of your parental home on Frederiksplein where you grew up in the late nineteenth century. As I closed my eyes, I imagined you there walking through the house on the marble floors and looking out through the stained-glass windows. When you were a little girl, you already dreamt of an artistic career: ‘From childhood I drew, naturally I came to painting. Never could I imagine not doing this and I cannot imagine my life without my work,' you told me on your 80th birthday. Who could have guessed then that you would win the gold medal at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris? Or that the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam would dedicate a solo exhibition to you in 1941? I wasn't born then, but I would have loved to get to know you.

Still, I shouldn't romanticise too much the time you grew up in. Although you grew up in greater luxury than the average Amsterdammer, you too must have seen poverty. When you played with your girlfriends on Prinsengracht in summer, did you also smell the smelly canals back then? There was no sewage system in Amsterdam houses yet, so full buckets were emptied into the canals with the greatest of ease. I hope your family was spared from cholera. However, you were lucky to grow up in a time of great changes; unlike many women before your time, you were able to go to art school. In 1898, you went to the Day Drawing School for Young Ladies. Your friend Lizzy Ansingh encouraged you to go to the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten and so you did. You joined in 1905 and here you became friends with a large group of female artists who would later refer to you as ‘The Amsterdam Joffers’. Your work was shown throughout the country and your work received rave reviews:

'Betsy Osieck is less well known here, it seems to me. [...] One should especially get to know her work. It is young and fresh and colourful, and extremely delicate. She expresses herself in very fine colours, very delicate modulations of tone and there is something of the fabric of butterfly wings over her best works.' 

Yet after your death, Dutch museums would mainly highlight the work of your male contemporaries such as George Hendrik Breitner, Isaac Israëls and Marius Bauer. Fortunately, times are changing and there is increasing appreciation for your work. Thanks to curator Jet Sloterdijk, the work of you and the other Joffers was on display at Museum Villa Mondriaan from 2022 to 2023, and your family also allowed your self-portrait to go on loan to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. 

Your work was often judged in the frame of the Joffers, while you did develop your own style. This was partly shaped by the many journeys you made, from Egypt to Japan. You found a love partner with whom you could share your love of art and travel. Herman Karel Westendorp had seen your work hanging at the exhibition ‘The Woman: 1813-1913’ where he would have liked to buy your self-portrait, but you never sold it. When he met you at your debut at the Kunstzaal Kleykamp in The Hague, he finally dared to approach you and you fell in love. You shared a passion for modern European art, as well as Asian art objects. You made long trips to China and Japan to purchase art for museum collections, but also for your own home. Your flat on De Lairessestraat was full of paintings by your friends Marius Bauer and Georges Hendrik Breitner, Chinese murals, Japanese folding screens and porcelain cabinets filled with Kakiemon plates. You felt it was important for your art collection to be preserved and displayed throughout the country. After your husband died, you donated a large part of your collection and your own art to various museums: from the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Dordrechts Museum and the Stedelijk Museum Schiedam.

A while ago, I visited your family. We ate apple pie and chatted for hours about the trips you took and the objects you bought here. What a surprise when it turned out that your travel diaries had been preserved! Although your husband's (travel) diaries had been researched and written out long and wide, no one was interested in hearing your side of the story. I am grateful that your family entrusted me with your diaries. For weeks I would leaf through your diaries and red travel diaries until the middle of the night, sometimes there were still Japanese leaves hidden in them or pieces of textiles from the beautiful fabrics you bought. I read how you favoured the art dealers in Japan by giving your own work as gifts. With success, you got to see special objects as a result. Together with your husband, you decided on the purchases, which is why we can still enjoy sixteenth-century Japanese screens, sake bottles and wooden Jizô sculptures in the Rijksmuseum's Asian Pavilion. 

Thanks to the preserved photo albums, travel diaries and the hundreds of sketches you made, everyone can witness your extraordinary travels. You recorded everything that fascinated you, from mountain peaks to cemeteries and stage actors. Once back in the Netherlands, you exhibited much of your work at art gallery Van Lier in Amsterdam. You also released an album about Japan with your husband. He wrote the lyrics and you made the watercolours. Although we can now access photos and texts of places all over the world online at the press of a button, it was different a hundred years ago. You offered Dutch people a unique insight into Eastern culture. Thank you for your amazing commitment to the city, and our country. You inspire me every day to pursue my dreams and look at our city's history with different eyes.