About the authors

In 1987 I was appointed curator of Slot Zeist, a magnificent castle near the city of Utrecht, in the Netherlands. As I had already become interested in Schwartze, I organized a major retrospective of Schwartze’s work in Slot Zeist, entitled Thérèse Schwartze: Portrait of a Celebrated Painter (1989/1990).

In 1989, while preparing for the retrospective I met Pieternel Kouwenhoven, who was writing her master’s thesis on Schwartze. The treasure trove of information she collected would prove indispensable to my account of Schwartze’s life and work in the first Dutch edition (1998) and the revised edition (2010) of this book. Her name is therefore rightly included as co-author.

In the Dutch edition, I discussed Schwartze’s migrant background as part of the explanation for the drive that led to her enormous success as an artist and entrepreneur. After the revised edition appeared in 2010, I examined her father’s American background in more depth. Two years later, I went to Philadelphia to conduct research on the Schwartze family, who settled there in 1819, having emigrated from Hamburg. In 2014 I wrote the article “An American element: The Dutch portraitist Thérèse Schwartze (1851-1918) and the land of unlimited possibilities,” which was published by the Art Renewal Center in Port Reading, NJ. The many responses to this article I received from readers all over the world strengthened my belief in the international significance of Schwartze’s work.

In the Netherlands, Schwartze is no longer an obscure artist. With this English publication, the story of her remarkable talents and career is made available to an international readership.

Cora Hollema, September 2015

Cora Hollema (born in 1948) has a master’s degree in the social history of art and wrote her master’s thesis on a contemporary of Schwartze, the Dutch-Norwegian marine painter Betzy Berg (1850-1922). She works as a freelance writer and has curated numerous exhibitions, including a major show of Thérèse Schwartze’s work in 1989/1990.
Visit my Facebook – Cora Hollema

Co-author Pieternel Kouwenhoven (born in 1962) has master’s degrees in art history and law. She wrote her master’s thesis on Thérèse Schwartze (1989).