signed with initials and dated ‘JD [interlaced] 1919’ and inscribed schets voor ‘n paneel […]/e vuurscherm/ Uitgevoers op triplex/ met dunne olieverf’ and with partly erased inscription ‘Paneel/ Vuurscherm’ (recto)
point of the brush and black ink, with papermaker’s blindstamp hand holding an axe
48.7 x 62.9 cm

Jo de Jong was a highly talented designer and maker of textiles, embroidery, and related applied arts. She was active from around 1915 until the mid-1930s: the heyday of Dutch modernism and Art Deco, in which artists akin to De Jong - such as Chris Lebeau, Willem Arondéus, Jacob Jongert, Lion Cachet and Duco Crop - produced their most important works. Today, however, De Jong has all but disappeared from the collective Dutch arthistorical memory. Her work appears to have vanished and is known only from a few photographs. As far as can be established, this drawing and the next, are the only pieces by her ever to have appeared on the modern art market.

Hardly anything is known about De Jong’s personal life. She was born in Amsterdam on 10 January 1896 and she attended the Dagteeken- en Kunstambachtschool voor Meisjes in that city. From 1921 to 1925 she taught design, drawing from nature, and gymnastics and from 1925 onwards she taught artistic needlework at the Instituut voor Kunstnijverheid (later the Gerrit Rietveld Academy) and also at the Rijksopleidinginstituut voor teekenleraren. Numerous artists and designers must therefore have been taught by her. Personal testimonies concerning this remarkable and active artist, however, have unfortunately not survived.

Around 1919 De Jong lived at Roelof Hartplein 4, where she probably shared a studio with the bookbinder and applied arts artist Elisabeth Menalda (1895–1997). In 1923 De Jong lived at 298 Lijnbaansgracht. From December 1919 to July 1934 she served as a voting committee member and treasurer of the Vereniging Nederlandsche Ambachts- en Nijverheidskunst (V.A.N.K.). Board members included men such as J.F. van Royen and N.P. de Koo; as a woman, De Jong was unable to gain access to that governing body. She did, however, contribute to the association’s Jaarboeken published by the Rotterdam firm Brusse. She must have known virtually everyone of note in Dutch modernist design of the 1920s. She collaborated, for example, with Gerrit Rietveld on the exhibition Moderne Nederlandsche decoratieve kunst/Arts décoratifs modernes hollandais in June 1929 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. She published several books, including Weef- en borduurkunst (Rotterdam, Brusse, 1933) and the extensive De nieuwe richting in de kunstnijverheid in Nederland. Schets eener geschiedenis der Nederlandsche kunstnijverheidsbeweging (Rotterdam, Brusse, 1929). This survey, enriched with no fewer than 296 illustrations, can still serve perfectly well as a standard work. Unfortunately, De Jong displayed the ‘feminine modesty’ of her time in neither mentioning nor illustrating her own work. This is regrettable, for it is in no way inferior to that of her male contemporaries.

One reason for De Jong’s subordinate position in art history is easy to surmise: her presumed ‘femininity’. In 1925 she exhibited in the Dutch pavilion at the celebrated Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes in Paris- the triumph of Art Deco. The pavilion was designed by J.F. Staal, with interiors designed partly by Jaap Gidding. It featured two large knotted carpets designed by Tom Poggenbeek and Hildo Krop; between them lay a large knotted carpet designed by De Jong. The surviving photographs of her work reveal Art Deco designs that are at once robust and refined, tightly rational in conception, and in no way inferior to those of her male colleagues (see figs. 1 and 2). In one review, however, De Jong’s supposedly ‘feminine’ quality of her work was, of course, explicitly singled out:


‘’Beheerscht en bewust, overwogen en evenwichtig als altijd het werk van dezen kunstenaar [Poggenbeek] is, heeft hij hier een schoon stuk gegeven. Links ervan ligt het tapijt dat Jo de Jong ontwierp. Zij, met echt vrouwelijke emotie, voelt veel meer in een kleed het wondere kleuren- en lijnenspel dat schijnbaar als een gril zich uitleeft, doch in wezen geraffineerd bedacht is. Het derde vloerkleed, rechts van het midden, werd door Hildo Krop ontworpen in fijn-grijze toonwaarden, waarin gele kleurvlakken een prachtig levend accent brengen, doch zoo, dat de stilte, die toch vaneen tapijt zal uit moeten gaan, niet verstoord wordt.’’

“Controlled and conscious, considered and balanced as the work of this artist [Poggenbeek] always is, he has here produced a fine piece. To the left of it lies the carpet designed by Jo de Jong. She, with truly feminine emotion, feels much more strongly in a textile the wondrous interplay of colour and line that seems to unfold capriciously, yet is in essence subtly conceived. The third carpet, to the right of the centre, was designed by Hildo Krop in delicate grey tonalities, in which yellow areas provide a beautifully vital accent, yet in such a way that the tranquillity which a carpet must convey is not disturbed.”

Due to the standards of her time, her artistic career effectively ended with her marriage. In 1933 she married the Texel physician Arie Dros (1876–1945), and in 1934 she relinquished her activities for the V.A.N.K. During the war the couple lived in Oosterend on Texel. She was fearless, and two Georgians were hidden in her home. Nothing is known of the final years of her life, and her date of death has not yet been established. When Dros died on 10 July 1945 (in Alkmaar), she was still alive.

This and the following drawing are excellent examples of De Jong’s mastery. The sheet with abstracted floral motifs was made, according to an insciption on the verso, in 1915 during her third year at the ‘Kunstambachtschool’. It must have remained in a portfolio ever since, for the pastel-like colours still retain their fine clarity. Notably, the paint appears to have been sprayed onto the sheet - almost as if with a graffiti spray can - after which the ornament and decoration were drawn over it in ink. Graffiti and spray cans did not, of course, exist in De Jong’s time, but the effect testifies to her modernity. It may have been intended as a design for wallpaper. Its style and patterns recall wallpaper designs produced in the same years by artists such as Piet Zwart, Chris Lebeau and Lion Cachet. The ornamentation is reminiscent of similar motifs in various works by Carel de Nerée tot Babberich, whose work De Jong is likely to have seen at the posthumous retrospective exhibitions held in all major Dutch cities between 1910 and 1914.

De Jong’s drawing is decorative and applied, yet at the same time an autonomous work of art of considerable expressive power, and can be understood in relation to developments in modern art of the period. It evokes associations with transitional works on the boundary between figuration and abstraction, such as those produced in the 1910s by artists including Elisabeth Stoffers, Eric Wichman, Lou Loeber and Albert Plasschaert.

The present drawing, which is a design for a fire screen (hearth screen), has a powerful composition in which the ornament and lines mirror the tongues of flame. Possible influences include the designs and illustrations of Willem Arondeus or Roland Holst. The executed fire screen was exhibited in October 1919 at the Haarlem Museum of Applied Arts, then the epicentre of modern applied art. Unfortunately, the screen has not yet been traced. The survival of the design for it therefore makes it all the more exceptional.

I am grateful to Sander Bink for his research and for preparing this catalogue note.