George Hendrik Breitner
ABOUT THE ARTWORK
| Year Painted | 1893 |
| Collection Link | Museum |
| License | Public Domain |
| File Size (Pixels) | 3420 × 5368 |
| Best Print Size | 11 x 17 |
| *Max Print Size | 24 x 36 |
*Printing this file larger than the recommended max print size may result in a blurry or pixelated final print.
SUBJECT NOTE: Geesje Kwak was a young Dutch woman best known as a favorite model of painter George Hendrik Breitner in the 1890s. Born in Zaandam in 1877, she moved to Amsterdam as a teenager and worked as a seamstress and hat maker. Around the age of 16, she began modeling for Breitner. She famously appears in his celebrated Girl in a Kimono series, painted during a wave of Japonisme that swept through Europe after the reopening of the Japan to foreign trade in the 1850s and 1860s. The Dutch at this time were especially drawn to Japanese prints, textiles, and aesthetics. Breitner’s portraits of Geesje reflect both this cultural fascination and a quiet intimacy. Geesje later emigrated to South Africa, where she died at just 22 of tuberculosis.
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