RKD Podcast: Helene Schemel
The sixth episode in the podcast series on women collectors can be listened to (in Dutch) on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, as well as other podcast apps. This episode is not about a female collector, but instead Caspar Stalenhoef speaks with Evelien de Visser about Helene Schemel (1850-1907): an art dealer who founded her own art gallery after her husband's death.
An artistic woman
Helene Schemel was born into a wealthy German family in 1850. She was interested in visual art and music from a young age, which led her to study at the conservatory to become a pianist and singer. This is where she meets Dutch student Anna Mouton. Through Mouton, Schemel gets to know the painter Adolphe Artz. Artz and Schemel marry, after which she moves in with him in The Hague. Little is known about her during this period, which changes when she becomes a widow at age 40 and Artz leaves her and the children with their debts.
2. Antonio Mancini, Woman with a Green Vase, c. 1895, collection Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, to be placed in The Mesdag Collection, The Hague
A widow at the helm
After Artz’s passing, she pays off the debts with the help of a studio auction of his work. To continue to provide for herself and her family afterwards, she establishes an art gallery in her residence. Here she traded mainly in paintings and watercolors by artists of the Hague School, which had included her husband. Schemel proceeded very expeditiously and quickly managed to find her footing in the national and international art trade. This makes her, so far, one of the few known examples of female art dealers in the Netherlands during the second half of the nineteenth century. Still, she remained limited in her abilities. This means much of her work must have taken place in an informal manner, without traceable sources such as letters or an archive of the art gallery itself.
Maison Artz
In 1897 Schemel marries again, to Gustav Sues. This has an effect on the art gallery. The business comes under his name and moves to a more luxurious building. Here, exhibitions are organized more frequently and catalogues for these exhibitions are published. This professionalization is accompanied by a new name: Maison Artz. Under this name the painting picturing a woman holding a green vase by Antonio Mancini is sold in 1902, among many others.
RKD curator Evelien de Visser specializes in the art trade and collecting history of the Netherlands during the nineteenth century. She researched Helene Schemel and Maison Artz as part of the project Women in Art. Dealers and collectors in the Netherlands, 1870-1914, for which she received the NWO Museum Grant in 2022. Despite the scarcity of sources, De Visser manages to use letters and various archives to paint a picture of the venturesome woman Schemel must have been. She tells us about it in this podcast episode.
Women collectors
The podcast series on female collectors ties in with the project The Other Half about women in the Dutch art world in the two hundred years between 1780 and 1980. These episodes are made possible in part by the Wilhelmina Drucker Fundatie.