Dutch Modernism: Leo Gestel
Lady with a large hat in an arbor, 1913
Oil on canvas
98 × 88.5 cm
© Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem

Leo Gestel shows Else Berg here with a quiet confidence that feels very much of its moment. She sits under the arbor with a cigarette held lightly between her fingers, a gesture that was seen as bold and even improper for a woman at the time. In Gestel’s hands it becomes something natural, almost casual, and it fits well with the experimental direction he was exploring. The colours are bright and slightly broken, the shapes a bit angular, as if he were testing how far Cubism and Futurism could go without losing the person in front of him. It is not a strict portrait but more a study in a new way of looking, where the world shifts into planes and rhythms and the sitter becomes part of that search.

Else Berg, born in Ratibor in Silesia, moved through the early modern art world with curiosity and energy. Together with her lifelong partner and fellow painter Mommie Schwarz—whom she would marry in 1920—she travelled widely and became part of the Dutch avant‑garde around 1910, forming friendships with Mondriaan, Sluijters, and Gestel. You sense that shared spirit here: artists pushing each other, trying out new ideas, and finding their own version of modernism. Else’s life took a tragic turn during the Second World War. She and Mommie, both Jewish, went into hiding but were betrayed, deported to Westerbork, and then to Auschwitz, where they were murdered on arrival on 19 November 1942. Knowing this gives her presence in the painting a quiet weight, as if Gestel caught something of her strength before history intervened.

Leendert Gestel, known as Leo because friends jokingly called him “Leonardo,” played an important role in shaping Dutch modern art. Alongside Sluijters and Mondriaan, he helped define a Dutch response to the international movements of pointillism, fauvism, cubism, and futurism, later becoming a leading figure of the influential Bergen School. Between 1912 and 1914 he worked intensely with Cubist ideas, mixing them with the speed and movement of Futurism. This painting is one of the results of that period, where colour and structure come together in a way that feels both experimental and surprisingly human. Its survival is also a stroke of luck: in 1929, a catastrophic fire destroyed Gestel’s studio in Bergen, consuming vast amounts of his early work. Pieces like this, already held in outside collections, remain rare windows into his most radical years.