Lucie van Dam van Isseltartist • painter • watercolourist • draughtsmanBergen op Zoom 1871-1949 Den Haag

Lucie van Dam van Isselt (1871–1949) showed a great talent for drawing at a young age. She attended the Hague Academy from 1891 and settled in Veere on Walcheren in 1907, where she soon fell under the spell of the bright, Zeeland light. During that period she started painting flowers and very personal, modest still lifes: small gems that were permeated with a pearly, silvery tone. A regularly recurring subject are the 'little girls', which were portrayed in oil or watercolor. It is suspected that her preference for bright grays and whites, occasionally interspersed with a still life against a dark background, was influenced by her painter friend Walter Vaes.
During her education at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Lucie van Dam married the painter Evert Ekker in 1892. In 1900, the year after the birth of their first son, the family moves to Renkum where they take up residence in the villa 'De Beekhof'. The house grows into a meeting center for various artists who seek their inspiration in the picturesque nature in the Oosterbeek area. Like many artists, Van Dam van Isselt also regularly visits Domburg, where her painting cousin Mies (Elout-) Drabbe lives, but also Veere, which was emerging as an artist's place.
The marriage between Lucie and Evert was not a happy one. In their first years together Lucie and Evert traveled a lot, after the birth of their second son Ekker sets off alone. In 1907 Lucie files for a divorce, very unusual and scandalous in those days; moreover, a woman hardly had any rights. Lucie is forced to leave her children behind and she leaves for Veere. She immediately established herself there as an independent artist to provide for her own income and she would continue to live there until 1933. She was thus the first of the nine independent female artists – the Veerse Joffers – who lived and worked in Veere between 1907 and 1922. In Veere Lucie tries to devote herself entirely to art again, encouraged by the Flemish luminist Théo van Rijsselberghe, who was regularly there to capture the special Zeeland light in his pointillist paintings. He advises her to start etching in addition to oil paint and watercolor
In 1909 she remarries the erudite, but arrogant and feared art critic Albert C.A. Plasschaert (1874-1941). Both are involved in the cultural life of Veere, which had become a meeting place for artists, writers and musicians. Despite their strong cultural interest, the marriage does not last. Plasschaert had a strong desire to have children, which was very painful for Lucie because she was already old and was not allowed to see her own children. Their marriage was dissolved in 1922.
Lucie, meanwhile, participates annually - from 1911 to 1920 - in exhibitions in the exhibition room built by Jan Toorop in Domburg, now Museum Tak van Poortvliet. Other exhibitors included Ferdinand Hart Nibbrig, Jacoba van Heemskerk, Charley Toorop and Piet Mondriaan. From 1911, Van Dam van Isselt devoted herself to painting small, refined (flower) still lifes, which she decided after a trip through Italy that year with Plasschaert: 'because I saw Titian Flora, that white, reddish woman with that bouquet. primroses in hand. Then I knew that I could reach no further spiritually and by hand than this wonderfully painted bouquet of flowers.' These still lifes are widely praised for their texture and delicate atmospheric drawing.
Lucie van Dam van Isselt will live and work in Veere for over twenty-five years. Like no other she has captured the beauty of Veere in all its facets in her work. She was an intriguing personality, had a rich active and social life, but also had to deal with adversity and grief. Quite unexpectedly she left Veere in March 1933 and settled in The Hague, where she died in June 1949, a few days before her seventy-eighth birthday.