The Youngest Daughter

Elisabeth Geertruida Wassenbrrgh "Self Portrait" 1754

Elisabeth Geertruida Wassenbergh (1729-1781) was the seventh and last child of painter Jan Abel Wassenbergh. Her father, a successful artist based in Groningen, a province in the northern Netherlands, taught his craft to Elisabeth and one of her brothers, while another daughter became a sought-after embroiderer.

We don't have a lot of biographical information about Elisabeth, other than that she worked as a genre painter and miniaturist, and was known to enjoy painting members of her family. One source states that she was married for the last four years of her life, and during that time she stopped painting. After her death her reputation faded, and atttribution of her work was often ascribed to other artists, in part because she did not sign her work. However, interest in Elisabeth was revived in the last half of the 20th C and several of her paintings were included in the 2006 exhibition "The Silver Age of Groningen."