Debora Duyvis - Lithograph, after W Witsen

DUYVIS, Debora Geertruida (b. Amsterdam 17-2-1886 – d. Amsterdam 29-10-1974), graphic artist and illustrator. Daughter of Jacob Duyvis (1854-1943), entrepreneur, and Eva Loos (1856-1924). From about 1926 until his death, Debora Duyvis had a relationship with Richard Nicolaus Roland Holst (1868-1938), visual artist.
Debora Duyvis was the eldest daughter in a family of four. She grew up in a wealthy Amsterdam family with her brothers, Jan (1884-1979) and Hugo Jacob (1890-1962), and her sister, Johanna (1892-1974). Her mother was Mennonite, her father a wealthy Dutch Reformed entrepreneur in coffee and related products. The children were registered as Dutch Reformed.
After primary school, Debora and Johanna were sent to boarding schools in Belgium, Germany, and England, preparing them for a respectable life as housewives. However, Debora aspired to an artistic career, found a studio on the Herengracht canal, and enrolled at the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, where she was admitted in 1911 – now 25 years old. At the academy, she received a thorough education in graphic arts under the guidance of Professor Johannes Aarts. She practiced various graphic techniques, but specialized in line engraving, a difficult and expensive intaglio method in which the image is carved into a copper plate with a burin. After graduating, she was granted a so-called "lodge" at the Rijksacademie from 1916 to 1918, allowing her to further develop her burin engraving skills without paying tuition. She did this under the then director of the Rijksacademie, Antoon Derkinderen, with whom she had a good relationship and who greatly encouraged her.
Burin engraver
Debora Duyvis initially created portraits using various graphic techniques, but she was dissatisfied with her work and left for Italy for eight months in 1921. This didn't bring her what she was looking for, and she went to Paris the following year. After her mother's death in 1924, she returned to her father in Amsterdam, but reassured about his situation, she resumed her itinerant artistic life, traveling to Corsica, Mallorca, Ibiza, Venice, and other cities in northern Italy, as well as Brittany. She also worked in Veere and Middelburg. On her travels, she found the inspiration she sought and drew what she saw. She incorporated her drawings of local costumes, mountain landscapes, and harbor scenes into graphic work, creating lively scenes by shifting perspective and layering the images.
During the 1930s, Duyvis fully developed as an artist. In 1931, she had her first solo exhibition at the Santee Landweer art dealership in Amsterdam, and after a favorable article by art critic Bram Hammacher in Elsevier's Maandschrift (1933), her reputation as a burin engraver was firmly established. The JH de Bois art dealership exhibited her work in Haarlem and The Hague, as well as abroad. In 1933, she was asked to succeed her mentor Aarts as a lecturer at the Rijksacademie (National Academy of Fine Arts). Although it was an honorable request, she declined; she did not want to give up her independent artistic practice. That same year, she did join the jury for the Prix de Rome for graphic arts—she also served on the jury in 1937 and 1941. From 1935, Debora Duyvis was a member of the Association for the Promotion of Graphic Art (De Grafische) and exhibited with this association. After the death of her beloved Rik Roland Holst in 1938, she settled his estate with Bram Hammacher and glass painter Willem Bogtman. The settlement would take until 1962.
Matters of principle
During World War II, Debora Duyvis took a principled stand against the occupying forces and refused to register with the Chamber of Culture. When Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen exhibited six of her prints in 1942, she had them removed. Nevertheless, she was not without clients during the war years; she didn't produce large, elaborate prints, but she did produce many applied graphics such as bookplates and New Year's greetings, which she always accompanied with a message for a better future.
In 1945, Duyvis was involved in the founding of the Dutch Federation of Professional Associations of Artists. She also breathed new life into the Grafische (Graphic Society). When the Dutch Circle of Graphic Artists and Draftsmen (De Kring), a subdivision of the Federation, was founded in 1947 and was about to merge with the Grafische, Duyvis strongly opposed it, partly because De Kring members would be admitted to "her" Grafische without a selection process. She believed this would compromise the high artistic and technical quality. In 1950, despite Duyvis's opposition and to her great disappointment, the merger was completed.
The merger battle spelled the end of Debora Duyvis's artistic career: she had lost her motivation. She exhibited once more in an international exhibition and created a few more engravings, but after leaving her studio on the Herengracht in 1961, she essentially stopped working.
Debora Duyvis died in October 1974, aged 88, in Amsterdam.