Watercolour of Rosa Manus
collection highlight
Among the thousands of items that were retrieved from Moscow in 2003, was this extraordinarily watercolour of Rosa Manus (1881-1942).
Rosa Manus, ‘a modern woman of stature’, was one of the founders and the first president of the International Archives for the Women’s movement in 1935.
At the bottom right ‘J.H. Sp. 27’. These intitials were used by Jacobus Hendrikus Speenhoff. He made this portrait in 1927. Most likely he used a photograph of Rosa Manus – published in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf 17 November 1917) – as an example. See the article by Myriam Everard in the Dutch Yearbook of Women’s History 35 (2015).
