Geesje Kwak (born Gezina Kwak; 17 April 1877 – 1899) was a model of the painter and photographer
George Breitner
George Hendrik Breitner (12 September 1857 – 5 June 1923) was a Dutch painter and photographer. An important figure in Amsterdam Impressionism, he is noted especially for his paintings of street scenes and harbours in a realistic style. He pa ...
. She became known for the series of seven paintings (and accompanying photo studies) that Breitner made of her in 1893 and 1894 as the girl in a red and white kimono lying on a sofa and standing in front of a mirror in an oriental interior.
Life
Gezina Kwak was born on 17 April 1877, in
Zaandam,
North-Holland,
Netherlands. Kwak moved to
Amsterdam in 1893 at the age of sixteen with her elder sister Anna. Kwak became a seamstress and a hat seller. She and her sister first lived in the Govert Flinckstraat, and then in the Tweede van Swindenstraat in
Dapperbuurt. The two sisters came into contact with the painter Breitner when he had just recovered from an eye infection and had moved into a studio at
Lauriergracht
The Lauriergracht (; literally "Laurel Canal") is one of the canals of Amsterdam, located in the Jordaan, west of the Grachtengordel.
History and inhabitants
It was painted and photographed by George Hendrik Breitner who set up a studio on the ...
. Breitner had visited an exhibition of Japanese prints in
The Hague in 1892, and subsequently purchased several Japanese kimonos and a few folding screens. He had the two sisters pose in this setting in 1893.
Kwak soon became his main model. She walked around the studio and Breitner took pictures and sketches of her. This is how the series of paintings of Kwak in kimono was created, of which
Girl in a white kimono and Girl in red kimono is the best known. However, Kwak did not pose for Breitner for very long. In 1895 she emigrated to
South Africa with her younger sister Niesje. There she died of
tuberculosis in 1899 aged 22. Kwak was paid for her work, and the relationship between her and Breitner appears to have been strictly businesslike. Breitner kept a meticulous note in a preserved notebook about when and how long she had posed for him, and what amount of money he had given her for it.
Literature
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Paintings & photographs
File:George Hendrik Breitner - Girl in a Kimono.jpg
File:Breitner Geesje Kwak 3.jpg
File:Meisje in witte kimono Rijksmuseum SK-A-3584.jpeg
File:Georg Hendrik Breitner - Staand naakt 1893.jpg
File:Geesje Kwak, en-profil naar links PK-F-GHB.015, PK-F-00.058.tiff
File:Breitner Meisje in rode kimono voor de spiegel.png
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kwak, Geesje
1877 births
1899 deaths
Dutch artists' models
People from Zaanstad
19th-century deaths from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis deaths in South Africa