Anneke van der Feer - Portrait of Helen van Dongen

Anneke (Anna) van der Feer (1902–1956)

Portrait of Helen van Dongen

c. 1931

Oil on canvas laid down on panel

Signed “Anneke van der Feer” lower right

47 × 36 cm

Frame: 54 × 43 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Vlissingen; private collection, Veere.

Acquired by Museum Arnhem.

Additional information:

The sitter, Helen van Dongen (1909–2006), was a pioneer of documentary film, a field long dominated by men. Her precise editing and visual storytelling made an important contribution to the development of the genre.

Born in Amsterdam, she began working as an editor in the late 1920s and became the regular collaborator of filmmaker Joris Ivens. Their collaboration produced classics such as De Brug (1928), Regen (1929), Philips Radio (1931), and The Spanish Earth (1937).

In the 1930s, Van Dongen worked in Moscow as an assistant director and teacher before moving to the United States with support from the Rockefeller Foundation. There, she edited films including Robert Flaherty’s The Land (1942) and Louisiana Story (1948), in which her subtle, poetic style played a defining role.

During the Second World War, she made films for the U.S. Office of War Information, the United Nations, and the Dutch intelligence service. Her final film, Of Human Rights (1950), reflected her strong social commitment. After marrying journalist Kenneth Durant, she withdrew from the film world, but her influence remained and was later recognized through retrospectives.

She met Anneke van der Feer at Ivens’s studio. Van der Feer was an activist, communist, painter, draughtswoman, and graphic artist. She studied art under Harmen Meurs in Amsterdam. From 1927 onward, she exhibited her work at the annual Onafhankelijken exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. During preparations for the 1931 exhibition, she helped Nola Hatterman hang her work, a moment captured in the well-known and almost iconic photograph.

Anneke van der Feer’s work sought to portray reality in a powerful and expressive manner, without embellishment. She worked in the styles of Social Realism and Nieuwe Zakelijkheid (New Objectivity), showing similarities with prominent artists such as Charley Toorop and Dick Ket, with whom she was also friends.

Through Meurs, she met the Russian filmmaker Joris Ivens, with whom she later became romantically involved and moved to Moscow in 1934. During her time there, she produced austere charcoal drawings of hard-working male and female workers at the Sikkel & Hamer steelworks, which were published in communist newspapers such as De Tribune. After Ivens left Moscow in 1936, Van der Feer remained there until 1938, determined to participate in the struggle she considered crucial. She later moved to Paris and eventually returned to Amsterdam in 1940. After the war, she designed the cover of the magazine Repoeblik Indonesië to mark the first anniversary of Indonesian independence. In 1947, Van der Feer travelled to liberated Yugoslavia, where the reconstruction of the country attracted young international brigadists who, among other things, helped construct the national railway. It was there that Van der Feer encountered Ivens again.

Van der Feer’s art, comprising both oil paintings and charcoal drawings, is characterized by a robust Social Realist style that distinguishes her from her teacher Meurs. Her works entered the collections of the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Frans Hals Museum, the Gemeentemuseum Helmond, and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

Anneke van der Feer spent her final years in the Zeeland town of Veere. On the basis of her work created there, she is considered part of the group known as the Veerse Joffers. In Veere, she met Herman Schutte, her final partner. In 1956, Van der Feer died unexpectedly from a heart condition.