Catharina Van Knibbergen

Catharina van Knibbergen
before 1630 - after 1671
 
Grotto with Mountain Stream
 
Oil on panel. 23,5 x 20 cm.
Provenance: Montefiore collection, SØR-Ruschke collection (H. -J. Raupp (ed.), Niederländische Malerei des. 17. Jahrhunderts der SØR Rusche-Sammlung, vol. 3, Landschaften und Seestücke, 2001, pp. 120-23, cat. no. 26).
 
Catharina van Knibbergen was an accomplished yet long-overlooked landscape painter active in The Hague from the early 1630s until after 1671. Likely trained by her father, the painter François van Knibbergen, she pursued a professional artistic career at a time when few women were formally recognized as painters. Her contemporary reputation is confirmed by a poem from 1634, in which she was praised as a “famous and highly skilled woman painter.”
 
Catharina was married twice, first to Lucas de Hen, a surgeon who was also active as an art dealer, and later to the officer Gerard de Witte. In 1648, she became a member of the Hague Guild of Saint Luke, where she was registered under her husband’s name, reflecting the period’s conventions surrounding female artists. She later joined the prestigious Confrerie Pictura, affirming her status within the city’s artistic community.