Henrike Scholten is an art historian and visual artist from The Netherlands, currently working as a PhD candidate at Utrecht University.

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Research:
I’m a historian of early modern Netherlandish art with a focus on the social history of artisic techniques.
In 2020 I graduated from University of Groningen’s research master in Arts & Cultural Studies (Art History track, cum laude). My research previously centered on the drawing albums from 1696 of Hendrick van Beaumont (1687-1707), a previously unknown draughtsman. I am currently working as a PhD Candidate at Utrecht University within the ERC-funded project DURARE (Dynamics of the Durable: A History of Making Things Last in the Visual and Decorative Arts).

Dissertation: "'t is al maer water-verwe", Durability and watercolor, 1585-1750.
My dissertation within DURARE centers on watercolor techniques and their perceived relation to durability in the long seventeenth century, examining how the concept of "waterverwe" functioned on a material, metaphorical and social level. My project is largely based on a corpus of art-technical written sources in print and manuscript, as well as object-based research. I use a blended method of art historical and hands-on historical reconstruction exercises.

I am currently researching the life and work of the elusive miniature painter Jacob Berents (before 1679-after 1747).

Visual artwork:
Since graduating from Minerva Art Academy in 2011, I have worked primarily in color pencil on paper. My drawings often use premodern visual culture as a starting point, combined with abstraction and improvisation, observations from real life, and pictorial clichés. My work investigates drawing as a process: I’m interested in taking apart processes of mark-making, constructing, observing and rendering. By reinterpreting historical images using modern visual strategies, my drawings interrogate the visual conventions that make us perceive images as representational.

Although my visual art practice and my academic research inform each other, they are separate activities.

News

Nov 2025 - Aug 2026
I am excited to join the Center for Netherlandish Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston as a Research Fellow

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Henrike

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