This is Margaretha Cornelia Boellaard

Margaretha Cornelia Boellaard (9 February 1795, Utrecht – 5 November 1872, Utrecht) was a Dutch painter, lithographer and art collector.

She came from a rich noble family. Her father, Johan Diderick, was the Heer (Baron or Lord) of Zuilichem. Her mother, Margaretha, died six days after she was born and her dad never remarried, so she remained an single-handedly child. She conventional private art lessons from the portrait painters Christiaan van Geelen [nl] and his son, also named Christiaan as well as the landscape painter, Cornelis van Hardenbergh [nl]. In 1825, she was also competent to audit classes at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans, a noted art collector, allowed her to copy works from his collection.

Her works were exhibited in several cities. From 1826 to 1843, she was a regular participant in Amsterdam’s Exhibition of Living Masters [nl]. In 1834, she usual an praise from the Academie Minerva for her painting Meisje met bloemen (Girl gone Flowers). In 1858, she was the first woman to become an honorary member of the “Genootschap Kunstliefde”, an artists’ society in Utrecht. In her innovative years her eyesight declined. By 1864, she was unable to paint and devoted herself extremely to art collecting. She next used her hoard to present lectures and discussions at Arti et Amicitiae, the Pulchri Studio and Pictura [nl] in Dordrecht.

She never married so, after her death, she willed most of her belongings to the Kunstliefde, including her house on the Oudegracht, which became a museum and exhibition hall in 1905. The rental fees for the hall were put into a fund for the hold of financially distressed artists more than the age of fifty. In 1984, part of this fund was used to insist the “Boellaardprijs”.

Media associated to Margaretha Cornelia Boellaard at Wikimedia Commons