Anna Francisca de Bruyns (1604/5–1656), Artist, Wife and Mother: a Contextual Approach to Her Forgotten Artistic Career

Abstract

In a sketchbook preserved in the Print Room of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels is a drawing by Anna Francisca de Bruyns.This small selfportrait, drawn in black ink on a sheet measuring 150 × 90 mm, almost seems to present a concise biography.At the bottom of the sheet, scrawled letters resemble first words, Mon mamam dada,1 as though De Bruyns was drawing while a child sat on her knee.Unlike the famous Judith Leyster of Haarlem (1609-1660), De Bruyns continued her artistic practice after her marriage.2This raises the question of whether women in general largely abandoned their artistic ambitions once married.In her dissertation on the aptitude of the female mind for science and letters, published in 1641, the learned Anna Maria van Schurman (1607-1678) even argued that educated women should not be distracted by domestic obligations; instead, they should employ servants and never marry.3This assertion notwithstanding, it is noteworthy that during the sixteenth century numerous Netherlandish female artists were married.Agnes van den Bossche (c.1440-after 1502), Susanna Horenbout 1 Sketchbook of Anna Francisca de Bruyns, inv.no.6507, fol.40, black ink on paper, 195 × 165 mm, Brussels Royal Library Print Room.The sketchbook was first mentioned in, Michel Benisovich, "Biographie d' Anne Françoise de Bruyns, peintre, écrite par Jacques Ignace Bullarts son fils,"

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