Marie Heijermans

Marie Heijermans or Marie de Roode-Heijermans (1859-1937) was a Dutch painter.

Biography

Heijermans was born on 14 October 1859 in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Among her ten siblings were educator Ida Heijermans, writer Herman Heijermans and community physician Louis Heiermans. She studied at the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten (Royal Academy of Art, The Hague) and Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten Academy of Visual Arts, Rotterdam. One of her teachers was Jan Philip Koelman. She was a member of Cercle des Femmes Peintres, a society for women artists. Sal Meijer was a pupil of hers.

While in Brussels Heijermans achieved success at the Paris Salon. She subsequently painted Victime de la misère depicting a nude woman, a clothed man, and chair with a bank note placed on it. The image was censored by the Belgian king and removed from an exhibition. The scandal resulted in the premature ending of her three-year work grant from the Belgian Queen Regent. The painting was purchased in the late 1920s by the Stedelijk Museum where it caused a new scandal having been purchased by taxpayer's money. It was removed from view.

In 1993 the (Trade Unions Museum) in Amsterdam held an exhibition of her work Een vergeten vrouw. De kunstenares Marie de Roode-Heijermans which included the controversial Victime de la misère.