Amateur historian Margreet de Broekert from Bussum has been researching the artist’s life story for several years after she interrupted Maria’s work at various people at home.
“Older Bussumers can probably remember her,” says Margreet. “Maria was quite a striking appearance. An eccentric lady in a long black jacket with fur collar, always accompanied by one or more dogs in the village of the birds. “
In 1909 Maria married at the age of 22 to the 17 years older Albertus Jacobus Mispelblom Beijer. They go to live in Villa Eykenrode, but after a few years the marriage stranded and Maria and her father involve a brand new villa in Bussum.
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Maria joins the Artists’ Association De Zorpenenen, founded in 1912. According to Margreet, there were big names with Jan Sluijters and Leo van Gestel. “Maria participates once in an exhibition in 1916, but then she stops. Her work did not really fit,” explains the amateur historian.
Animal protection
The artist fully plays on her great love for animals. Together with a well -known vet, she sets up the Gooise Tak of the Dierenbescherming. For years she works for an animal shelter that arrives at Meerweg in Bussum in 1928.
In the 1930s, the well -to -do life of Maria came to an end. After her father’s death, the alimony of her ex-husband is her only source of income. She will paint portraits in exchange for food and lives until after the war in a room on the JH van ‘t Hoffweg.
Then it goes downhill with Maria. “She seems to have had eighteen cats and six dogs there,” says Margreet. “They all die of hunger. And she herself was also wrong with everything.”
After the war, Maria ends up in one of the notorious hobby houses on the Veldweg. “She no longer had teeth in her mouth, was sick and did not wash herself,” says Margreet. “And she lived there with thirteen dogs, a pigeon and a box with mice.”
Margreet: “On February 12, 1957, the drama was on the Veldweg. That day all her animals were taken away and finished. She never got on top of that”. Maria is included in an insane asylum, where she will die shortly afterwards.
Member of the NSB
After the Second World War, Mary is accused of having healed with the Germans. A year and a half later she is acquitted for the tribunal. At the start of her research, Margreet thinks that the accusations were unjustified, and especially malignant.
But recently she was able to view Maria’s file in the National War Archives. “I was shocked. There were eleven reports. A portrait of Hitler would have hung on her wall and she went singing on the street ‘Deutschland über everything’.”
She continues: “At first I wanted to give Maria reparation, because people only remember her bad period. I mainly had to do with her. But now I have to adjust my image”.
View the episode of ‘On an old bicycle’ about Maria Mispelblom Beijer-Theunissen below: