Evelien de Visser, MA
Curator of Nineteenth-Century Art
Curriculum vitae and duties
Evelien de Visser has been curator of Nineteenth-Century Art at the RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History since 2017. She specialises in the art trade and collecting history within the Netherlands during the long nineteenth century. In 2022, she was awarded a NWO Museum Grant for her research on female art dealers and collectors in the Netherlands.
As curator, she wrote contributions for several exhibition catalogues on the nineteenth-century artists Bernard Blommers, Willem Bastiaan Tholen and the couple Kate and Christoffel Bisschop. She is currently conducting her PhD research on collectors of contemporary art in the Netherlands in the second half of the nineteenth century.
In 2012 she graduated with first-class honours from the University of Groningen, writing her final dissertation on the evolving appreciation of the work of Bernard Blommers. While at university she was an intern at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (Municipal Museum The Hague), the Van Gogh Museum/the Mesdag Collection as well as the RKD. Between 2014 and 2019, Evelien worked as a documentalist for the Mondrian Edition project, and from 2019 to April 2023 she was involved in the Van Gogh Worldwide project as an Information Specialist.
Publications (selection)
- ‘Collecting contemporary art in Rotterdam between 1870 and 1892: The international taste of Fop Smit Jr (1815-1892)’, Oud Holland 1 2023, p. 49-68.
- ‘Het echtpaar Bisschop en de markt voor eigentijdse kunst’, in: tent.cat. Christoffel & Kate Bisschop. Verlangen naar vroeger, Leeuwarden (Fries Museum), p. 95-101.
- ‘Benijdenswaardig handig’: W.B. Tholen en de kunstmarkt’ in: tent.cat. Willem Bastiaan Tholen (1860-1931). Een gelukkige natuur, Parijs/Dordrecht (Fondation Custodia/Dordrechts Museum), p. 64-75.
- ‘The Rotterdamsche Kunstkring’s comprehensive W.B. Tholen exhibition in 1906’, RKD Bulletin (2020)
- ‘Zonnige strandtaferelen en huiselijke interieurs: het oeuvre van B.J. Blommers’, in: tent.cat. B.J. Blommers (1845-1914): De zonnige Haagse School, Zwolle (Katwijks Museum) 2016, p. 56-93.