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Sometimes writing about artwork tends toward the very technical or the very emotional. And when the pieces are created by someone famous, that adds another layer to the “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” notion. When the collection was passed on to you by your mother and is the work of dear friends, well … it gets complicated.
A Yakima woman is selling some lovely, European-style art painted by some very famous women. They are not, however, known for painting. Johanna, Maria, and Agathe von Trapp are world-famous thanks in part to the beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, “The Sound of Music.” But, of course, there is much more to their story than what is portrayed on stage and screen.
Heidi Burmeister, a one-time editor of Yakima Magazine, met the three sisters through her mother, Helene. The elder Burmeister was a trained classical singer and in 1982 her vocation led her to a chance meeting with Johanna and Maria.
“My mother had a beautiful voice,” Heidi said. “She sang with the Seattle Opera as well as the church choir and at special events. Mom was performing at the Burien library with the Johann Strauss Trio and two von Trapp sisters were in the audience, which thrilled my mom,” she explained. “Mom introduced herself and they began a friendship.”
At that point, Johanna was retired, divorced and lived in a rustic cabin near the beach in La Conner. Helene visited her there and took note of rocks Johanna had painted. Recognizing talent, Helene encouraged her friend to paint more, even supplying Johanna with supplies to get started. According to numerous sources, the von Trapp children were particularly creative and some had professional instruction growing up. Johanna’s early interests were in working with clay, but late in her life painting was the outlet that found her once again in the limelight.
“She kept after it and her painting got more delicate and beautiful over time,” Heidi said. “Through that process an idea was born to my mom to help Johanna sell her stuff.”
According to a 1989 story in the Bellevue Journal American newspaper, Helene said: “We had so much in common — our singing, our European upbringing, our love of God.” Helene and her husband Fritz both emigrated from Germany as young adults with their families. Fritz was an engineer with Boeing and the elder Burmeisters were avid patrons of the arts, especially the old works of masters, and classical music. The couple often returned home from their frequent travels with original European watercolor paintings purchased at shows. That was the foundation of an art gallery the couple built above their Bellevue home.
The von Trapp Family Collection had exclusive rights to the artwork of Johanna, Maria and Agathe, and the von Trapp sisters were frequent visitors. Heidi and her younger sister Stephanie have both been asked many times if they met any of the von Trapp artists.
“Johanna actually moved to Bellevue very close to us and was at our home all the time,” Stephanie said. “She was like our grandma and was very much a part of our family at the time,” she added.
Helene and Fritz’ love of culture was passed to both daughters. Heidi remembers a field trip at age 10 or 11 to the Burnley School of Art on Seattle’s Capitol Hill.
“I was fascinated beyond words,” she said, “and that’s where I ended up.” Burnley later became The Art Institute of Seattle, where Heidi earned an associate of applied arts degree and specialized in graphic design. She used both her degree and later experience as a marketing director to help her mother sell the von Trapp paintings.
“I encouraged mom to get a website but she was old-school minded and so it didn’t happen,” Heidi said. “So even though she had contracts and meticulous documentation of her rights to market and sell the art as well as make prints, people can be skeptical of authenticity. She did not work on marketing. Mom liked the fun part, but the business part was not her forte.”
Helene and Johanna had considerable success selling the lovely European-style watercolors early in their collaboration. At a 1984 One Woman Show & Art Auction to benefit Seattle Opera and Civic Light Opera, they sold 90 originals. That prompted another event in Portland with similar results. That’s when both Maria and Agathe signed with Helene to sell their own artwork. While Johanna’s work usually included images of nature, especially edelweiss, forever endured to audiences through the song written specifically for “The Sound of Music,” Agathe’s work included crayon etchings, which she made into linoleum block prints that were used in illustrations and greeting cards. Some of the schoolteacher’s most popular work was linoleum block prints of the Stations of the Cross that the young woman made between concerts when the family was on a bus tour of the U.S. and many of her pieces are religious in nature. Maria, who also began painting later in life, served as a missionary in Papau, New Guinea, and while there she developed a style of fingerpainting abstract “fantasies.”
Although The Von Trapp Family Collection gallery began successfully, Johanna was felled by a stoke after just a couple of years. At that point, she was still able to sign her name and Helene began making prints of the original works in an effort to continue support of her friend. Johanna eventually returned to Austria where she passed in 1994. When Helene passed in 2016 she left her collection to Heidi and Stephanie, thinking that her dream would provide for her children’s future.
As Heidi explained, “Mom was already known for herself, through her beautiful singing voice, but she wanted to help her friend and for a couple of years they had great success. They had a ball riding high.”
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