Henriette Willebeek le Mair

Henriette Willebeek Le Mair was born in Rotterdam in 1889 to a cultured family of wealthy merchants. Her father, a keen patron of the arts and an amateur painter, encouraged his daughter's artistic talent, and in 1910, the publisher Augener Ltd

Commissioned Henriette to illustrate a treasury of nursery rhymes. This friendly partnership produced her most original and commercially successful work, including Our Old Nursery Rhymes (1911) and its companion, Little Songs of Long Ago (1912). Through her extensive travels abroad, Henriette developed an interest in Eastern religion, languages and culture. In 1921, Henriette converted to Sufism, a mystical Islamic philosophy.

Although painting remained important to Henriette throughout her life, her religious work eventually took precedence over her illustration. On her death in 1966, Henriette left her estate to the Soefi Stichting Inayat Fundatie Sirdar, which she and her husband had founded in 1957 to perpetuate the teachings of the Sufi master, Inayat Khan.