Interior of a Farmhouse

The panel carries the inventory number NK 2697, and in the Netherlands that prefix carries a history. NK stands for Nederlands Kunstbezit, the foundation set up in 1945 to take charge of art that came back from Germany after the war, having left the country by sale, trade or seizure during the occupation. Much of it stayed in state hands, and since 2022 the Cultural Heritage Agency has been working through more than 3,200 of these objects to establish who owned them before the war. The painting itself is undated and small, roughly 34 centimetres high, and it shows the subject Suze Robertson returned to for most of her career: the inside of a farm dwelling, dark, thickly brushed, the sort of room where a woman is at work. Critics noticed her originality early. The wider Dutch public stayed cool about the gloom.