Albert Houthuesen was a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

-born British artist. He was born in Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

, but came to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1912, following the death of his father. During the 1920s, he studied at the Royal College of Art

Royal College of Art

The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...

 with Henry Moore

Henry Moore

Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....

, Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth

Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE was an English sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism, and with such contemporaries as Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo she helped to develop modern art in Britain.-Life and work:Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield,...

, Edward Burra

Edward Burra

Edward Burra was an English painter, draughtsman, and printmaker, best known for his depictions of the urban underworld, black culture and the Harlem scene of the 1930s....

, Ceri Richards

Ceri Richards

-Biography:Richards was born in the village of Dunvant, near Swansea, the son of Thomas Coslett Richards and Sarah Richards . He and his younger brother and sister, Owen and Esther, were brought up in a highly cultured, working-class environment...

 and Cecil Collins

Cecil Collins

Cecil Collins was an English artist originally associated with the Surrealist movement.He was born in Plymouth and worked first as a mechanic at a firm based in Devonport. From 1924 to 1927 he attended Plymouth School of Art...

. His work was significantly influenced by Rembrandt, Constable

John Constable

John Constable was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home—now known as "Constable Country"—which he invested with an intensity of affection...

, Turner and van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

.

Houthuesen's art is autobiographical and belongs to no 20th century school. He worked in virtual isolation for sixty years, producing still-lives

Still life

A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...

, landscape

Landscape art

Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...

s, seascape

Seascape

A seascape is a photograph, painting, or other work of art which depicts the sea, in other words an example of marine art. By a backwards development, the word has also come to mean the view of the sea itself, and be applied in planning contexts to geographical locations possessing a good view of...

s, and portrait

Portrait painting

Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait...

s, as well as biblical, mythical and allegorical scenes.

Souren Melikian, in a feature article on Houthuesen in the International Herald Tribune

International Herald Tribune

The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 38 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 160 countries and territories...

 (9.10.10) wrote: "I suspect that Houthuesen will come to be seen as one of the great figures in post-World War II Western art".

Houthuesen’s unique story is mirrored in his work which can be viewed, together with a comprehensive chronology and the 1976 BBC film on his life, on www.houthuesen.com Link label. Each work reproduced is accompanied by the artist’s words spoken to his biographer Richard Nathanson.

Major public collections

• The Ashmolean Museum
  Ashmolean Museum
  The Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...
  
  , Oxford;
• The British Museum, London;
• City Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle;
• Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield;
• City Art Gallery, Leeds;
• National Museum Cardiff
  National Museum Cardiff
  National Museum Cardiff is a museum and art gallery in Cardiff, Wales. The museum is part of the wider network of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales...
  
  , Wales;
• Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery;
• Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon;
• The Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent;
• Tate Britain
  Tate Britain
  Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
  
  , London;
• The Theatre Museum, London;
• Ulster Museum
  Ulster Museum
  The Ulster Museum, located in the Botanic Gardens in Belfast, has around 8,000 square metres of public display space, featuring material from the collections of fine art and applied art, archaeology, ethnography, treasures from the Spanish Armada, local history, numismatics, industrial...
  
  , Belfast;
• Victoria and Albert Museum
  Victoria and Albert Museum
  The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
  
  , London.

Further reading

• Nathanson, Richard Walk To The Moon - The Story of Albert Houthuesen, 2008.
• Buckman, David Artists In Britain Since 1945, 2006.
• Nathanson, Richard Walk To The Moon - The Story of Albert Houthuesen, 1990.
• Rothenstein, John
  John Rothenstein
  Sir John Knewstub Maurice Rothenstein CBE was an English art historian. He grew up in London the son of Sir William Rothenstein. The family was loosely connected to the Bloomsbury Set. John Rothenstein studied at Oxford University and became friends with T. E. Lawrence...
  
  British Art Since 1900, 1962.
• Rothenstein, John Albert Houthuesen: An Appreciation 1969.
• Rothenstein, John Modern English Painters vol. 111, 1974.

External links

• Albert Houthuesen 1903 - 1979