Vrouwenhuis

The Vrouwenhuis on Melkmarkt 53 in the Dutch city of Zwolle is a former old age home for women. It is now rented as separate apartment units for students, while housing a small museum on the ground floor that is only accessible by special request.

The house originally faced the harbour, near the old weigh house that served as a portage point for ships travelling the IJssel river. The harbour was part of the Grote Aa waterway, a tributary of the Zwarte Water running through the city, which was filled in after cholera outbreaks in the 19th century. In the 1572 map of Zwolle a ship is shown moored in front of this house, which was strategically located next to the Waterpoort, a city gate allowing the passage of ships.

The house was bought in 1645 by the young lawyer Hendrik Wolfsen (1615–1684), the wealthy son of a councilman (Rijkman) in Zwolle. Hendrik kept a diary in the 1640s until 1649 when he became magistrate of Zwolle. The facade of his house was improved in the early 17th century, probably according to his instructions. His daughter, the painter Aleijda Wolfsen, was born there on 22 October 1648. From 1650–1656, he became a representative to the Staten Generaal and stayed for weeks at a time in The Hague. In 1657, he moved his family to the Hague when he was promoted to member of the high court of the Duchy of Brabant. He kept the house in Zwolle, and when his daughter Aleijda married Pieter Soury (later mayor of Zwolle) in 1667 in Rijswijk, he gave her the house on the Grote Aa in exchange for the couple's possessions in the Hague.

The couple had several children, and in 1680 they made improvements to the house, most notably building the hallway attaching the front house to the rear house, so that they could house their extended family. The extra space was probably also necessary as a studio for Aleijda, who continued to paint after her marriage. Her sitting room, the "Grote Sael" (later the regent's room) with its carved mantelpiece, and the carved wood decorations and marble floors in the hallway were all added during Aleijda's lifetime.

Aleijda was not the only woman painting in Zwolle. Gesina ter Borch lived and worked on the Sassenstraat, and her contemporary Eva van Marle had been active as a portrait painter in the 1650s. In 1686, the small painting school of Wilhelmus Beurs began; his pupils were the half-sisters Cornelia van Marle and Aleida Greve, Sophia Holt, and Anna Cornelia Holt. Works by these women dated 1686 are on display in the regent's room. In the frontispiece to a book on painting that Beurs published in 1692 and dedicated to his four pupils, three women are portrayed in a room gazing at three paintings that are the same size as those they created under his instruction.

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