Artist

Alida Withoos

Monkshood in Bloom

• Alida Withoos (Dutch, 1659–c. 1730)
• Watercolor and gouache on paper
• Before 1700
• Nasjonalmuseet

 The Artist

Alida Withoos was a still life painter and botanical illustrator in the Dutch Republic during the late seventeenth century. She, like her siblings (who were also artists), was likely trained by her father, Matthias Withoos.

Although facts about her life are scarce, we know that as a botanical illustrator, Alida Withoos was part of a network of renowned painters and wealthy plant collectors. She worked for art collector and horticulturalist Agnes Block, one of the first Europeans to successfully cultivate and fruit the pineapple outside of its native habitat. She also worked with Maria Sybilla Merian on a drawing with different varieties of the columbine. Withoos contributed twelve leaves to the so-called Moninckx atlas (1686–1706), a compilation of 420 watercolors of plants in the Amsterdam Hortus Medicus.

According to Liesbeth Missel’s biographical essay (in Dutch) at the Huygens Instituut website, no works created after 1700 are attributed to the artist. Missel writes that in 1701, at age 39, Alida Withoos married Andries Cornelisz van Dalen, a painter ten years her junior. About him even less is known than about his wife; he was apparently a member of the Van Dalen family of engravers and portraitists from Amsterdam.

Museums and libraries that hold works by Alida Withoos include the Rijksmuseum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Morgan Library and Museum, Wageningen University and Research Library, Nasjonalmuseet, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Amsterdam Museum, Musée Fabre, Harvard Art Museums, Boijmans Van Beuningen, London’s Natural History Museum, and Museum Flehite.

Recent exhibitions including work by Alida Withoos:

Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400–1800 at the Art Gallery of Ontario from March 30–July 1, 2024, and previously (October 1, 2023–January 7, 2024) at the Baltimore Museum of Art. 

Women on Paper at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, December 5, 2022–May 30, 2023.

In Full Bloom at The Mauritshuis in The Hague, February 10–June 6, 2022.

Women Artists of the Dutch Golden Age, a focus exhibition presented by the National Museum of Women in the Arts, October 19, 2019–January 5, 2020.

Learn more online about Alida Withoos at:

The Art Herstory blog:

Alida Withoos: Creator of beauty and of visual knowledge, by Catherine Powell-Warren

A Space of Their Own: Explore >

Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD): Explore >

Google Arts & Culture: Explore >