A life in lines and light

Charlotte Pothuis began her days in London in 1867 before finding her way to the studios of Amsterdam. Her hands learned the discipline of drawing at the Dagtekenschool voor meisjes, a place where the basics of form were etched into memory. She did not work in isolation; instead, she sat among the lessons of Henriëtte Asscher, Meijer de Haan, and Jan Zürcher. These instructors left their marks on her technique, helping her move between the soft textures of painting and the sharp precision of etching and lithography.

In 1891, her life became intertwined with that of Karel Alexander August Jan Boom, a fellow painter. Together, they moved through the circles of the Amsterdam art scene, finding a place within the Vereeniging Sint Lucas and the Arti et Amicitiae society. There was a practical side to her creativity as well. In 1896, alongside Anna Sluijter, she opened a photography studio on the Singel. Known as Dames Sluijter & Boom, it was a space where light was captured through a lens, marking one of the first instances of women running such a studio in Amsterdam.

The subjects of her gaze

Her work often turned toward the quiet corners of the landscape and the stillness of domestic life. One might find a cityscape featuring a drawbridge and a mill rendered in oil, or perhaps a simple arrangement of flowers in a vase. She possessed a versatility that allowed her to shift from the broad strokes of a landscape to the fine, detailed lines of a draughtswoman. Her subjects were often grounded in the visible world:

• Cityscapes and village views
• Still lifes with fruit, wine, and roses
• Portraits, including figures like Willem Paap and Israël Querido
• Farmhouses along sandy roads

The textures of her work changed depending on the medium. In etching and lithography, she relied on the bite of acid and the grain of stone to create depth. In her paintings, color and light took precedence. Her involvement with the Theosophical Society between 1895 and 1899 suggests a mind interested in the unseen layers of existence, much like the way a photographer looks for the hidden details in a shadow.

A presence in Amsterdam

The later years of her life were marked by both professional continuity and the harsh shifts of history. She exhibited almost every year from 1903 until the onset of the Second World War. However, the social fabric changed; at the start of the war, she was removed from her membership at Arti et Amicitiae along with other Jewish artists. This period of exclusion coincided with a time when her work was being recognized by institutions like the Rijksmuseum, which included her in the 1939 exhibition Onze Kunst van Heden.

She passed away in Amsterdam in 1945. While much of her life was spent in the active pursuit of making images, her legacy remains held in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Museum. Her work survives as a record of a specific time and place, captured through paint, ink, and light.