Who is Francina Margaretha van Huysum?

Francina Margaretha van Huysum (1707–1789), was a Dutch 18th-century flower painter from the Northern Netherlands.

She was born in Amsterdam as the daughter of Jan van Huysum and probably assisted him with his work. In the 20 page biography of her daddy written by Jan van Gool, the only woman mentioned is Margaretha Haverman who Van Gool claimed had been allowed to become his solitary pupil “under false pretenses”. This phrase was meant to indicate that Van Huysum was delightful to allow female family of associates and friends urge on him (presumably because they could not sign their own names) but avoided the help of male pupils for startle of revealing his technique and creating competition. It is unclear so whether he allowed his daughter or his sister Maria to urge on him.

According to the RKD Francina’s works have been formerly qualified to her daddy Jan and later to her uncle Michiel and were lonesome in 2006 re-attributed to her by Sam Segal. The works certainly attributed to her are a pair of pendant paintings outdated 1729 and now in the accretion of the Fitzwilliam Museum. A copy of these pendant paintings in the aerate of hopelessly overpainted signatures, are now considered autograph and are in the Dulwich Picture Gallery. It is this undated pair of times copies which were documented by John Smith in 1835 as by Jan van Huysum and whose attribution was repeated in 1928 by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot.

Sam Segal discovered a note roughly a pair of pendants purchased by Cornelis Ploos van Amstel in 1661 by F.M. van Huyzum which were as great as J. van Huyzum in an auction sale. The copyist Oswald Wijnen later made watercolour copies of these pendants that are now in the Teylers Museum:

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