Etie van Rees - Beautiful 1950s watercolor "fantasy animals" signed - Sold

• Very beautiful watercolor on paper "fantasy animals", painted in the 1950s by the famous Dutch/Indian artist Etie van Rees (1890-1973). This watercolor also includes a preliminary study/drawing she made in Indian ink (35x23cm). The framed watercolor is in good condition and has sheet dimensions 25 x 25cm (HxW).

Eelcoline Adrienne van Rees was a Dutch painter, draftsman and ceramist. Etie (also Eetie) van Rees was born in the Dutch East Indies as daughter of Daniel François Willem van Rees (1863-1934) and Eelcoline Pruijs van der Hoeven (1867-1947). She came from a family of administrators, her father was director of the Domestic Administration and vice-president of the Council of the Dutch East Indies. He was a son of Governor General Otto van Rees. On her mother's side she was a granddaughter of Abraham Pruijs van der Hoeven, governor of Aceh.
Like many Indian Dutch people, Van Rees went to Europe to learn; she was educated in Lausanne and The Hague. In The Hague she was taught for eight months by the Hague painter Bernard Schregel, but otherwise she was self-taught as an artist. She painted, watercolored and drew and also made etchings and lithographs, she exhibited several times in the Dutch East Indies. Van Rees married the Scottish businessman Neil Mac Neill in 1911, with whom she had four children. The marriage did not last and after the First World War Van Rees settled in the Netherlands with her children. In 1924 the family moved to Wassenaar. In 1928 she illustrated the book The Fable of the Dwarf Deer by Marie van Zeggelen. As Eetie van Rees, she published the fairytale book The Night Men in 1946, which she illustrated herself. She became a member of the Pulchri Studio and 'de Grafische' and exhibited her watercolors and drawings several times.
In 1952 Van Rees also started working with ceramics. Together with Harm Kamerlingh Onnes, she was one of the first to make ceramic sculptures. She became known to a wider audience with her imaginative animal figures, which she called crawlies. She first made a number of design sketches for each animal. The primitive decorations are partly derived from Javanese culture. In 1959 she won a gold medal at an international ceramics exhibition in Ostend. Five years later, the exhibition 'Between man and animal, ceramics by Etie van Rees' was held in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, which subsequently moved to other museums.
Van Rees lived in Aerdenhout from 1969. She died in 1973, at the age of 83. A year later, a memorial exhibition was held in Het Kapelhuis. In 1990, a major retrospective of her work took place at the Princessehof in Leeuwarden.
(source: Metzemaekers)