Portrait of Christine Poolman

Person depicted Christine Poolman (1850-1930)
Role Lysbeth in Zonsopgang (Jakob van Schevichaven)
Artist Clasine Neuman (1851-1908)
Medium Oil on canvas
Year 1901

Both the person depicted and the painter are women in a man's world. As Lysbeth in the play Zonsopgang, the actor Christine Poolman points to the script about William the Silent by Jakob van Schevichaven: the writer is in charge. The particular occasion for the production was the inauguration in 1898 of the first queen of the Netherlands, Queen Wilhelmina. That the portrait was presented at the theatre in 1901 is remarkable in itself. Its painter, Clasine Neuman, was rejected three times by Pulchri Studio, to which she had been nominated by her father, the painter Johan Hendrik Neuman. In a letter to the board he wrote that the quality of his daughter's work, and that of other women painters, was in no way inferior to that of the male members, yet these women too had been refused. “The latter is most unfair — or do the gentlemen fear competition from these ladies?”