Jan Veth

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Self-portrait, 1887. Oil on canvas, 35 × 26 cm. Drents Museum , Assen .

Jan Pieter Veth ( May 18, 1864 in Dordrecht - July 1, 1925 in Amsterdam ) was a Dutch painter , poet , art critic and professor of art history and aesthetics . He was best known as a portrait painter and made paintings, drawings and etchings mainly by artists and scientists.

Life

Jan Veth was the son of Gerrardus Huibert Veth and Anna Cornelia Giltay. His father was a respected iron merchant in Dordrecht and a liberal politician, his mother came from a famous family of painters, the Van Strij from Dordrecht, she was a granddaughter of Jacob van Strij . Veth studied painting at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten , the Reich Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam. With some of his fellow students he founded the Sint Lucas artists' association . From 1885 he worked in the workshop of the painter Anton Mauve in Laren, North Holland .

Portrait of Cornelia, Clara and Johanna Veth, 1885. Oil on canvas. 90.2 x 109.6 cm. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam .

On August 10, 1888, he married Anna Dorothea Dirks. After his marriage he settled in Bussum . The couple had five children.

Jan Veth became known as a painter, draftsman and etcher of well-reflected portraits. First of all, Veth painted members of his family and friends, especially fellow painters. The scientists he portrayed included the physicians Arnold Aletrino and Christiaan Eijkman , a later Nobel Prize winner, the physicist Johannes Petrus Kuenen , the historians Reinier Cornelis Bakhuizen van den Brink and Theodorus Jorissen, and the art historian Wilhelm von Bode . As an artist he painted the writers Albert Verwey and Lodewijk van Deyssel , the painter colleagues August Allebé , Jozef Israëls and Max Liebermann , the composer Rosy Wertheim . He designed the book cover for the fairy tale De Kleine Johannes by his friend Frederik van Eeden . In 1902 he designed postage stamps with the portrait of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands for Dutch colonies . In 1918 he portrayed the Queen Mother Emma von Waldeck and Pyrmont , who had been regent of the Netherlands for many years. In 1924 he was commissioned to design postage stamps with the portrait of Queen Wilhelmina for the Dutch Post .

Heintje, 1891. Oil on canvas. Dordrechts Museum

Veth's most famous work is the painting Heintje, a girl from Het Gooi , the Gooiland in North Holland, located between Amsterdam, Amersfoort and Utrecht. The work from 1891, for which there is also a chalk drawing by the artist, is in the Dordrechts Museum and shows a young girl who was later available as a model for the painting Karen (1893). The Dordrechts Museum writes about Heintje's drawing: “Simplicity is the hallmark of truth. Isn't that even more evident in the fine chalk drawing [than in the painting of the same name]? Truth, purity, pure nature - doesn't it always express innocence? A young, uninhibited, pious girl is shown. A symbolic theme that occupied many painters around 1890: Toorop , Gauguin , Matthijs Maris . Gauguin saw piety in Breton women, Veth in women in rural areas [North Holland]. "

Karen, 1892. Oil on canvas. Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo

The painting Karen (1892) is in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo and shows the woman from Andersen's fairy tale The Red Shoes . Veth painted a stylized version of the girl that looks slightly unreal and therefore all the more symbolic. Veth was also heavily criticized for this portrayal. But the two-dimensional color scheme in tight contours gave Karen a thoroughly modern look.

He was also a poet and writer. He belonged to the Tachtigers , a renewal movement of Dutch writers in the 1880s, and published in their magazine De Nieuwe Gids , which was founded in 1885. He had a long friendship with the art historian Johan Huizinga , who wrote his biography after Veth's death. Huizinga also characterized the group around the magazine De kroniek , founded by Pieter Lodewijk Tak in the 1890s, which Veth had also joined. This group of artists became known as the “moving van negentig” [movement of the nineties]. The married couple Henriette and Richard Roland Holst as well as André Jolles also belonged to her. Huizinga described the movement as follows: “The turning point that began to make itself felt in the art and literary life of the Netherlands around 1890 was partly based on a reaction against the excessive individualism and impressionism of the first Trachtigers, and exuded a need for more style and determination, more firm direction and belief. [...] It concentrated on two poles, that of socialism and that of mysticism. But for one as for the other, the lot was: art and living together, monumental art. ”Veth himself published regularly in De kroniek and his book Streifzüge einer Dutch painter in Deutschland was published in 1904 by Bruno Cassirer in the library of selected art writers. His well-known book publications dealt with important painters such as Rembrandt , Dürer and Israëls .

Veth taught as an associate professor for art history and aesthetics at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. He was a member of the museum board of trustees of the Museum Het Rembrandthuis , where he made important suggestions for the focus of the collection. On April 28, 1923 he was appointed a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences .

In his various functions - as a painter, writer and teacher - Jan Veth left a clear mark on Dutch art and culture. He is said to have combined optimism with realism in all these functions, approached people with great openness, which was very beneficial for him when painting portraits, but also fought with great passion for his views.

gallery

Works (selection)

Portraits

Further artistic work

Book publications

  • Forays into Germany by a Dutch painter. Library of selected art writers, Bruno Cassirer 1904.
  • Rembrandt's leven en art. 1906 (on behalf of the General Committee on Rembrandt 300th Birthday Commemorations).
  • (together with Samuel Muller Fz. ): Albrecht Dürer's Dutch journey. Grote, Berlin 1918, Volume I: The documents about the trip. Volume II: History of the Journey.
  • Joseph of Israel and his art. Cohen, Hiersemann, Leipzig / Amsterdam undated

literature

Web links

Commons : Jan Veth  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Dordrechts Museum: Heintje, een Goois meisje , accessed on October 18, 2016.
  2. ^ Kröller-Müller Museum (Otterlo): Karen, 1892 , accessed on October 20, 2016.
  3. ^ Christian Krumm : Johan Huizinga, Germany and the Germans , Encounter and Confrontation with Neighbors, Münster, New York, Munich, Berlin: Waxmann Verlag 2011, ISBN 978-3-8309-2446-3 , pp. 37 to 39, accessed on October 20, 2016.
  4. ↑ Ad de Jong, Adriaan Antonie Marinus de Jong, Adriaan Jong: The Conductors of Memory , Münster, New York, Munich, Berlin: Waxmann Verlag 2007, p. 170, accessed on October 20, 2016.
  5. ↑ Digitaal Wetenshopshistorisch Centrum: Jan Pieter Veth (1864-1925) , accessed on 7 October 2016th
  6. ↑ Huygens: Veth, Jan Pieter (1864-1925) , accessed on October 19, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Veth, Jan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Veth, Jan Pieter (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch painter, poet, art critic and professor of art history and aesthetics
DATE OF BIRTH May 18, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Dordrecht
DATE OF DEATH July 1, 1925
Place of death Amsterdam