BARTHOLOMEUS, Johannes van Hove

    Bartholomeus Johannes van Hove (born The Hague, October 28, 1790 – died there November 8, 1880) was a Dutch painter and the father of Hubertus van Hove. He played an important role in the development of 19th-century painting by his many disciples. He was able to teach his skills to a large group of artists, of whom especially Johannes Bosboom and Johan Hendrik Weissenbruch would rise to great heights.Van Hove was a pupil of his father, Hubertus van Hove the Elder and the theater painter JHAA Breckenheijmer, and was appointed headmaster in 1820 at the Hague Academy Teeken. In 1823 he was commissioned by the War Department to illustrate the variety of Dutch army uniforms in a series of pen drawings. Van Hove was also a decorative artist and in 1829 he succeeded his teacher JHAA Breckenheijmer as a stage painter at the Hague Theatre.
     In the painting world of The Hague he was a public figure and in 1847 he was one of the founders of the Pulchri Studio. He also became the first president of this group, a position he held until 1851. He was also a member of the Amsterdam-based Arti et Amicitiae, of which he became honorary chairman in 1874.
     Van Hove painted mostly cityscapes and church interiors in a romantic style. His early works are characterized by a fine, detailed painting style, which strongly contrasts with the broad, colorful stage sets. His cityscapes and church interiors were often decorated with figures, sometimes done by his son Huib. His later cityscapes are looser and smoother in tone with a tailored gray coloration.

SPOHLER, family of painters

      In this folder I included paintings of Jan Jacob Spohler and his two sons.
      Jan Jacob Spohler (1811, Nederhorst den Berg – 1866, Amsterdam) was  a pupil of Jan Willem Pieneman and became a member of member the Koninklijke Academie in Amsterdam in 1845.  He is known for winter landscapes and became the father of the painters Jacob Jan Coenraad Spohler (1837 - 1923) and Johannes Franciscus Spohler  (1853-1894). He worked in Amsterdam from 1830-1839 (where he later returned and lived from 1861 onwards), Haarlem 1840-1843, Brussels 1844-1847 (and briefly again in 1853), The Hague 1848-1849, Leiden 1850-1860, and Rotterdam 1854-1855. In addition to his sons he taught the painter Willem Vester.

VERVEER, Salomon Leonardus 'Samuel' (1813-1876)

                   Salomon Leonardus, shortly 'Samuel' Verveer was a student of the Academy in The Hague before entering the studio of Bartholomeus van Hove, where he befriended his fellow student Johannes Bosboom. Verveer developed into an artist of broad talent, painting town views, landscapes and river and harbour scenes. Although embedded in the Romantic tradition, many of his paintings have the same realist qualities as the best pictures of his contemporary artists, later included into The Hague School. Verveer was a highly regarded member of Pulchri Studio as well, the artist’s society that was at the heart of The Hague School, and it is most likely due to his death in 1876, that he is not counted among them. He therefore is considered a position between the Romantic tradition and the realism of The Hague School.It is interesting to realize that one of the most important themes of The Hague School painters was first explored by Verveer and Andreas Schelfhout (1787-1870), the leading landscape painter of the Romantic School. The life and work of the fisher folk in Scheveningen, The Hague’s beach town, became a prime motive later in the century for Hague School painters like Mesdag, Artz, Weissenbruch and Blommers.The position of The Hague as the centre of Dutch painting in the second half of the century was very much geographically determined: a pleasant city with the polders on one side, the dunes, beach and the North Sea on the other, for the artists to roam in search of subject matter. 

                  Verveer was particularly drawn to the picturesque town of Scheveningen and the locals with their traditional dress. The tough fisherman’s life gave him the opportunity to include a certain sentiment and storyline in his paintings, very much like Jozef Israels in many of his Scheveningen interiors.  The romantic atmosphere and bright colours of the work he made around 1840 reveal the influence of his young friend W.J.J. Nuijen, who died prematurely. He subsequently painted with a natural light and without any romantic motifs like ruins or reflecting rivers. His paintings were a huge success with his contemporaries. His best known student was Jan Weissenbruch.

NUYJEN, Wijnand Jan Josephus (1813 – 1839)

            Born in Den Haag to a baker father who recognised his son's talent, Nuijen was apprenticed at age twelve to Andreas Schelfhout, a local artist. Between 1825 and 1829 he studied at the Den Haag Tekenacademie, under Bartholomeus Johannes van Hove. In his short lifespan Nuijen became a prolific painter of rural and marine landscapes, spending much time on the Normandy and northern French coasts. Here he fell under the spell of painters who were working in France, such as Richard Parkes Bonington (1802–1828) and Eugene Isabey (1803–1886), both of whom painted picturesque villages, Normandy harbours and seascapes, with a spontaneity Nuijen admired and adopted. His preoccupation with ruins is typically Romantic and his use of colour and texture is reminiscent of the watercolours of Turner.

            The Felix Meritis society of Amsterdam awarded him a medal in 1829 for his watercolour of a forest landscape. On completion of his tuition he travelled to Belgium, France and Germany, at times with his painting companion Antonie Waldorp [1803–1866]. Nuijen became a member of the Koninklijke Akademie in Amsterdam in 1836, and just before his death he married the daughter of Schelfhout, his former tutor. Nuijen died in Den Haag on 2 June 1839.

Nuijen was unusual among Dutch painters of the period, his theatricality and liberal style contrasting with the near photographic depiction that was then the norm. King William II greatly admired Nuijen's work, and when he bought the "Shipwreck" in 1843 he already owned five other Nuijen paintings.

 

KLUYVER, Pieter Lodewijk Francisco (1816 - 1900)

                 The Dutch landscape painter, Pieter Lodewijk Francisco Kluyver (1817-1900), was a specialist in panoramic landscapes working in the area around Arnhem, Amersfoort, The Hague and Amsterdam. In terms of style and composition and his search for technical perfection, Kluyver's work is very much a continuation of the 17th century Northern Netherlandish tradition of landscape painting as exemplified, among others, by Jacob Ruysdael and Philips Koninck.
                 The painting shown here is of particular interest given its daring use of colour perspective, Kluyver's use of light and the impressive clouded sky. The artist has enriched the foreground with figures which stylishly lead the viewer's gaze in the direction of the plain stretching out towards the horizon. This painting is a 'pièce de conversation' in the true sense of the word: it illustrates the artistic dialogue between the realists of the 17th century and their 19th century successors with a nicety that is rarely encountered. While the 17th century painters worked from memory, their 19th century admirers extended their painterly language through the fruits of the great 19th century advance of observation.