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Anna van Westerstee Beek (also spelled “Beeck”) was born in 1657 in The Hague, a coastal city in the Dutch Republic around 40 miles southwest of Amsterdam. In 1678, she married the art dealer and publisher Barent(s) Beek and began a long career in the map publishing trade. Beek was granted a divorce by the local courts after her husband deserted her and their seven children in 1693 and took over the business of publishing maps and plans from her estranged husband. Four years after their divorce, we have records of her taking out patents under the name “Anna Westerstee, wife of Barent Beek” which signals that she had continued the business and may have assumed his guild rights.
There was a long tradition of women being intricately involved in the largest map publishing houses (called “ateliers”) in the Low Countries. Women were involved at every level of production: engraving, printing, coloring, and publishing. Ateliers could have a large network of family members working on production at any given time, including wives, daughters, sisters, and widows. It was not uncommon for a widow to take charge of a publishing operation or inherit the guild rights upon the death of a husband, including women from the famed House of Hondius. Because of this, we should not be surprised that Anna Beek ran Chez Beek as Chez Anna Beek following her divorce.
We know of approximately 60 prints and maps that were published under her name between 1697 and 1717, and 30 of which are currently in the collections of the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress. Looking at the maps we have attributed specifically to Anna Beek (again, some maps print her name as “Beeck”) it is clear that she specialized in city plans, charting naval invasions, mapping ground troop movement, and battle lines. She picked the perfect time to enter the business of printing up-to-date maps of battle activity: the War of the Spanish Succession began in 1701 and spanned her entire career.
When Charles II, the King of Spain, died in 1700 at the age of 38, Europe was thrown into tumult. Prior to his death, he had named the Bourbon grandson of French King Louis XIV (Philip, Duke of Anjou) as his successor. Charles II was the last Habsburg monarch of Spain and, in naming a Bourbon King to succeed him, gave nearly unilateral control of Europe to the House of Bourbon. From the view of England, the Dutch Republic, and the Holy Roman Empire, naming another Bourbon King would give too much influence to the French and would ultimately disrupt the