HAARLEM.- The Frans Hals Museum is shining a long-overdue spotlight on Coba Ritsema, a once-celebrated Dutch painter whose name gradually slipped from public memory despite a career marked by early success and international recognition. Now on view at the museum’s Groot Heiligland location, the exhibition Coba Ritsema. An Eye for Color reintroduces audiences to an artist whose work challenges long-standing assumptions about women’s place in early 20th-century art history.

Running through March 1, 2026, the exhibition is the result of extensive new research and marks the first time Ritsema’s oeuvre has been examined so comprehensively by a museum. The show brings together paintings from major public and private collections, many of which are being exhibited for the first time in decades.

A career built on early acclaim

Born in 1876, Ritsema emerged around 1900 as a formidable talent. At just 23, she won the prestigious Willink van Collen Prize at her debut exhibition in Amsterdam—a remarkable achievement for any young artist, and especially for a woman at the time. Her work quickly gained international exposure, appearing at world exhibitions in Paris and Brussels and at the Venice Biennale, where she frequently received awards. Contemporary critics regularly described her as one of the most important female artists in the Netherlands.

Yet, despite this success—and even a knighthood awarded by Queen Wilhelmina in 1935—Ritsema’s reputation faded after her death in 1961.

Rewriting the narrative

One of the exhibition’s most significant contributions is how it dismantles persistent myths surrounding Ritsema’s career. Long described as a student of George Hendrik Breitner, new research confirms that she was not his pupil. While Breitner visited her studio and offered advice, he reportedly felt she was already too accomplished to teach. The assumption that she must have studied under him, curators argue, reflects broader historical tendencies to frame women artists as secondary to male contemporaries.

Curator Maaike Rikhof notes that Ritsema’s marginalization had less to do with artistic quality and more to do with how her work was categorized. Her portraits and still lifes were long dismissed as “typically feminine,” a label that diminished their perceived importance and obscured her independence and professional networks—many of them built alongside other women artists.

Paintings of quiet intensity

Ritsema’s paintings are anything but modest. Her portraits—often depicting young women seen from behind or absorbed in thought—carry a quiet psychological weight. Her still lifes, meanwhile, are painted with loose, confident brushstrokes that appear spontaneous but are carefully composed. Subtle shifts of green and blue dominate her palette, creating a sense of balance and restraint that feels strikingly modern.

Thanks to newly uncovered archival material, the exhibition also identifies several of Ritsema’s recurring models, grounding these intimate works in lived relationships and daily life.

A timely rediscovery

At a moment when museums are reassessing their collections and histories, Coba Ritsema. An Eye for Color feels both corrective and celebratory. It restores visibility to an artist who not only succeeded in her own time but did so on her own terms.

Accompanying the exhibition is a major new publication—the first full-length book dedicated to Ritsema—which further cements her place within the art world of around 1900.

For visitors today, the exhibition offers more than a rediscovery. It provides a reminder of how many artistic voices were sidelined—and how much richer art history becomes when those voices are finally heard.