PREFACE TO THE BIOGRAPHY OF JULIE DE GRAAG PUBLISHED IN 2026
The text
published below is a translation from the Dutch of the preface to the biography
of Julie de Graag, which appeared in 2026. See: Jan Paul Hinrichs, De guts als metgezel. Julie de Graag 1877-1924 (The Hague: Statenhofpers, 2026),
p. 9-13. With one exception, the footnotes from the original have been omitted
here.
*
Julie de
Graag (1877-1924) created more than one hundred woodcuts, including ex libris
and hundreds of drawings, many of which served as preparatory sketches for her
prints. She also painted canvases although only ten of them are currently known.
Woodcuts, however, form the core of her oeuvre: the prints that were executed with
great inspiration and perfection in every single detail. Her
work combines intimacy without sentimentality, a clear artistic vision,
extraordinary determination, and exceptional technical skill.
At a time
when elaborate lines were predominant in the visual arts, Julie de Graag chose
to eliminate unnecessary details from her compositions. Her works are surprisingly
simple, yet this is what constitutes her strength: often drawing
inspiration from nature, she
reduced her subjects to the very essence. Flowers, animals and trees lose their
anecdotic and impressionistic characteristics in her hands. What remains is crystal
clear and pure in form.
De Graag's mastery of line transcends mere
technical proficiency; it reflects an extraordinary power of concentration and
the precision of an eagle's eye. With black lines on paper, she created
complete worlds within a single image. Although her subjects appear neutral,
familiar, and even domestic, her work conveys a sense of melancholy, fragility,
and quiet curiosity. It is this intense serenity that continues to make her art
so expressive today.
After her death, Julie de Graag gradually faded
from public memory, though her achievements were never entirely forgotten.
During her lifetime, she was a respected artist whose talent was never
questioned. Shortly after her death, Cornelis de Lorm, an admirer of her work,
exhibited her woodcuts, paintings, and charcoal drawings in his gallery De
Zonnebloem in The Hague. This was the first exhibition devoted to her work.
In 1927, thirty of her drawings—primarily
sketches for woodcuts—were displayed at the Museum voor Moderne Kunst on the Korte Vijverberg in The Hague, later
renamed the Gemeentemuseum and today known as the Kunstmuseum Den Haag. These
works had been donated to the museum. Thereafter, her name was mentioned only
occasionally. Nevertheless, she occupied a prominent place in a 1937 review of
Dutch graphic art: “There are numerous remarkable contemporary graphic artists,
but one of the most prominent is Julie de Graag, who died at the age of
forty-seven. Her work, both restrained and subtle, will serve as an example for
younger generations of artists.”
Although Julie de Graag remained largely unknown
to the broader public, her artistic significance continued to be recognized by
specialists. A few decades ago, a street in Enschede was named after her—an
unusual distinction for an artist who had fallen into relative obscurity. A
renewed appreciation of her work emerged in 1989, when it was included in the
exhibition Flowers from the Cellar, dedicated to women artists and held
in Arnhem. This revival was made possible in part by the substantial attention
devoted to her life and work in the accompanying catalogue. Yet this did not
lead to a comprehensive publication or deeper scholarly study. Virtually all
writings about De Graag published in subsequent decades drew heavily on that
catalogue.
In 2004, her work was prominently featured in
the exhibition About Animals, Villages and Landscapes at the Gemeentemuseum
in The Hague. Her woodcuts were shown alongside works by artists such as Paula
Modersohn-Becker, Edzard Koning, Dick Ket, and Jan Mankes, placing De Graag's
art within a broader and more distinguished artistic context. Only in 2017 was
a small exhibition Julie de Graag – Cut out of Fine Wood devoted
entirely to her work organized at the Drents Museum in Assen.
Julie de Graag’s achievements received
well-deserved international recognition in 2024, when the Museum Escher in het
Paleis in The Hague exhibited her prints. At last, her work was presented
alongside that of the world-renowned artist M.C. Escher, who, to my knowledge,
had never previously been associated with her. The exhibition was not prompted
by new research or recent publications from the museum, nor by the discovery of
previously unknown works. Coincidentally, my collection of essays, Bremmerians—dedicated
to Julie de Graag and ten other female artists from her circle—had just been
published.[1] Her cat-themed prints also
formed the focal point of the exhibition As a Cat from Home, organized
by the Steendrukmuseum in Valkenswaard.
Meanwhile, in the summer of 2025, the Rijksmuseum
announced via social media that selected works by Julie de Graag would be
exhibited in its twentieth-century art galleries—among the most prestigious
exhibition spaces in the Netherlands. In 2025, her woodcuts were also included
in an exhibition dedicated to Jo Koster, jointly organised by the Museum Arnhem
and Museum Belvédère in Oranjewoud. Eventually, De Graag's work was on display
simultaneously at several museums.
In a sense, however, her work had already gained
widespread visibility on the internet before it attracted renewed attention in
the museum world. Thanks to the internet, her woodcuts depicting animals,
plants, and landscapes had long since acquired an international cultural
presence. Anyone who searches for her name online will inevitably encounter
countless products featuring reproductions of her prints, including posters,
mugs, face masks, tote bags, cushion covers, notebooks, and sweaters. It speaks volumes about instant, hypnotic power of her art and
attraction of her style.
The international market also offers a number of
print-on-demand books reproducing Julie de Graag’s work without any information
about the publisher or any scholarly introduction. Such products should not be
regarded as genuine publications. This international—particularly
American—online mass market has little to do with a conscious appreciation or
recognition of Julie de Graag as an artist. Rather, it reflects the ease with
which artworks no longer protected by copyright can be downloaded free of
charge from the Rijksmuseum's digital collection and commercially reproduced. Yet,
as I have observed time and again, her name remains relatively unfamiliar to
the broader public. This is true not only of consumers purchasing
computer-generated products online, but also of many art enthusiasts and even
artists.
In the essay collection Bremmerians, Julie
de Graag is presented as part of an informal group of ten female artists who,
during various periods in the first half of the twentieth century, worked under
the influence of the ‘art patriarch’ H.P. Bremmer—artist, teacher, and
publicist. The group included Corrie Pabst, Anna Egter van Wissekerke, Tjitske
van Hettinga Tromp, and Bertha van Hasselt, one of De Graag's closest friends.
The book devotes individual chapters to De Graag as well as to Antoinette van
Hoytema, Ida Siewertsz van Reesema, Louise Kneppelhout, and Louise van Holthe
tot Echten. Among these artists, however, Julie de Graag occupies a central
position, as she was the most distinctive figure in several respects.
Her personal life took the most dramatic course.
She was the first to settle in Laren, she died at a much younger age than the
others, and she was the only one to take her own life. Artistically, too, she
stood apart. Unlike the other artists, De Graag devoted herself almost
exclusively to graphic art, and more specifically to the woodcut. By contrast,
lithography was the preferred technique of most of the others. As far as I
know, none of them practised etching. Moreover, De Graag's highly individual style
is immediately recognisable, whereas the works of the other artists can at
times be mistaken for one another.
The connection between De Graag and Bremmer is
documented by a small number of surviving letters. Beyond these, however, it is
difficult to determine the extent of his influence on her artistic development.
It appears that another figure—the sculptor Joseph Mendes da Costa and a fellow resident of
Laren—played a more significant role in shaping her artistic vision. The certainty with which the designer Cornelis de
Lorm wrote about Julie de Graag in 1919, in one of his largely overlooked
articles, is particularly striking: “She attended H.P. Bremmer's classes for
years, yet she was not one of his followers, although she learned a great deal
from him.” This observation strongly suggests that Bremmer's influence on her
work should not be overstated.
The considerable attention Bremmer devoted to De
Graag in the introductory articles he published in his magazine Beeldende
Kunst between 1916 and 1928—many of them illustrated with her
woodcuts—demonstrates the high esteem in which he held her as a master of the
medium. His admiration also contributed to the sustained interest of art
collectors in her work. Even today, her woodcuts continue to surface in private
collections that originated among participants in Bremmer's classes during the
first half of the twentieth century.
The present book on Julie de Graag is based on considerably more source material than was available when I wrote the chapter devoted to her in Bremmerians. When I gave a lecture at Museum Escher in het Paleis on November 16, 2024, to mark the opening of the exhibition featuring the work of Julie de Graag alongside that of M.C. Escher, the book had just been published. At this lecture, I was able to show three photographs of her that I had no longer been able to include in the book. At the time, this was an extraordinary finding, considering that almost a century after her death Julie de Graag had been represented only in a couple of drawings made by other artists in 1922 and in two group photographs from 1900, both published in Bremmerians.
Research in publicly accessible art collections,
combined with a meticulous study of literary sources, led to the discovery of
information that had been unknown to me while working on Bremmerians. As
a result, I was able to correct several significant errors that had appeared in
earlier publications. For example, I clarified the misconception that De Graag
moved to The Hague around 1900, whereas she had in fact spent her childhood there,
and I established that the fire in her studio occurred in 1907 rather than in
1908.
In March and September 2025, while studying
materials from three private collections, I encountered numerous previously
unknown drawings, paintings, and photographs by and of Julie de Graag, which
immediately shed new light on her life and work. Most of the illustrations in
the present book originate from these collections and have never been published
before.
Despite these discoveries, the available
biographical sources concerning Julie de Graag remain relatively limited. Her
personal archive—including photographs, diary pages, notebooks, and
documents—has not yet become accessible. To date, only six letters written by Julie
de Graag to a third party have been discovered. Likewise, firsthand accounts of
her personality are extremely scarce. For this reason, I have deliberately
excluded speculation from this book. It is my hope that future discoveries will
provide a more complete picture of Julie de Graag's life.
Translated
from the Dutch by Natalia Hinrichs
Copyright ©
by Jan Paul Hinrichs 2026
Translation
Copyright © by Natalia Hinrichs 2026
[1] Jan Paul
Hinrichs, Bremmerianen. Julie de Graag en haar kring. Tien kunstenaressen in Den Haag en Laren (Leiden: Fragment, 2024).
