The story of a Leeuwarden feminist Miss Matthijssen
Leeuwarden
The exhibition “Miss Matthijssen, the Story of a Leeuwarden Feminist” paints a portrait of this multifaceted and forward-thinking woman and the environment she moved in. She wasn't a feminist in the activist sense, but she was through her actions.
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The exhibition “Miss Matthijssen, the Story of a Leeuwarden Feminist” offers a portrait of this multifaceted and forward-thinking woman and the circles in which she moved. She wasn’t a feminist in the activist sense, but she certainly was through her actions. She operated in male-dominated fields and placed women — often ladies from the upper classes — at the centre of her work.
The exhibition is on view until Sunday, 19 October.
Gert Elzinga, former curator at the Fries Museum, has published a study on Gerharda Henriëtte Matthijssen (Leeuwarden 1830 – Amsterdam 1907). Known in her time as Miss or Mejuffrouw Matthijssen, she was a progressive woman. She was the first woman in Leeuwarden to work professionally as a photographer. Between 1878 and 1903, she also ran a successful art gallery and dealership on the Ruiterskwartier.
As the initiator and organiser of the Exhibition of Objects of Industry and Art Made Exclusively by Women (1878) in the Riding School near the Arendstuin — the first national exhibition to centre women’s work — she was truly ahead of her time.
Despite the absence of personal documents such as letters, diaries, or even photographs in which she appears, Elzinga has managed to piece together an impressive picture of Matthijssen. What she thought or what motivated her cannot be known for certain. Fortunately, other sources — such as newspaper archives and collections fromTresoar and the RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History — provided the necessary insights to reconstruct and share her life and work.
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