Alida Withoos (c. 1661/62 – 5 December 1730 (buried)) was a Dutch botanical artist and

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...

. She was the daughter of the painter

Matthias Withoos Matthias Withoos (1627–1703), also known as Calzetta Bianca and Calzetti, was a Dutch painter of still lifes and city scenes, best known for the details of insects, reptiles and undergrowth in the foreground of his pictures.Seymour Slive, ...

Life

Alida Withoos was born in Amersfoort. With three brothers Johannes, Pieter, Frans, and her sister Maria, she was trained by her father in painting

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

s and botanical illustrations. Because of the invasion of Utrecht by the French, the family moved to

Hoorn Hoorn () is a city and municipality in the northwest of the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is the largest town and the traditional capital of the region of West Friesland. Hoorn is located on the Markermeer, 20 kilometers ( ...

in 1672. In 1701, Alida married the Fijnschilder Andries Cornelisz van Dalen, a typical example of relations between artistic and painterly families in seventeenth and eighteenth century Holland. A training in painting was expensive and not often given to daughters, but talented daughters could be trained to work in the studio of their father, uncle, brother or spouse, often under his name. Unlike her husband, brothers and sister, Alida acquired a certain reputation painting under her own name, principally due to her botanical images. In Hoorn a number of the Withoos children were active as artists of flowers, birds, butterflies and insects. In inventories, such images were regularly called "Withoosjes". Alida was – with her brother Pieter – one of the many artists who painted plants on the country house place Vijverhof in the service of

Agnes Block Agnes, or Agneta Block (29 October 1629, Emmerich am Rhein – 20 April 1704, Amsterdam) was a Dutch Mennonite art collector and horticulturalist. She is most remembered as the compiler of an album of flower and insect paintings. Life Agneta Bl ...

. She painted in 1687 (at Agnes Block's) the first pineapple bred in Europe, though these images have unfortunately not survived. Thirteen water colours that Alida made in 1694 for the coloured Moninckx Atlas, along with 425 images of plants in the Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam (where plants brought back in the ships of the Dutch East India Company were grown in neat rows as at Block's house), have survived. The Library of Wageningen University own a book of drawings bought by the collector

Simon Schijnvoet Simon may refer to: People * Simon (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name Simon * Simon (surname), including a list of people with the surname Simon * Eugène Simon, French naturalist and the genus ...

that includes 7 by Alida Withoos, perhaps made for Block. These give a good idea of the high quality of her work. She was buried in the Western Church in Amsterdam.

References

External links

Biography in Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon

* ttp://library.wur.nl/desktop/tulp/konstboeck/ Konstboeck {{DEFAULTSORT:Withoos, Alida 1660s births 1730 deaths Dutch Golden Age painters People from Amersfoort Dutch women painters Flower artists 17th-century Dutch women artists