Willem de Zwart
Encyclopedia
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The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
- 11 December 1931 The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
) 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...
painter, engraver, watercolorist, with many connections to the Hague School
Hague School
The Hague School is the name given to a group of artists who lived and worked in The Hague between 1860 and 1890. Their work was heavily influenced by the realist painters of the French Barbizon school. The painters of the Hague school generally made use of relatively sombre colours, which is why...
.
Willem De Zwart was born in The Hague on 16 May 1862, the eldest of eight children. His youngest brother, Pieter, would also become a painter. His father painted carriages for a living, and in 1875 the fourteen-year-old Willem was apprenticed to a carriage maker to learn the same trade. In his spare time, he copied prints he found in magazines, and a year later he enrolled in the evening class at the Royal Academy of Visual Art in The Hague. The following year, he was admitted at the studio of Jacob Maris
Jacob Maris
Jacob Maris was a Dutch painter, who with his brothers Willem and Matthijs belonged to what has come to be known as the Hague School of painters....
. In the three years that he remained here, it is probable that he got to know many of the leading lights of the Hague School. Maris also sent De Zwart on a journey to the coast, without drawing materials, and had him work out his impressions directly on canvas when he returned to the studio.
De Zwart made several copies of works by 16th and 17th century masters in the Mauritshuis
Mauritshuis
The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis is an art museum in The Hague, the Netherlands. Previously the residence of count John Maurice of Nassau, it now has a large art collection, including paintings by Dutch painters such as Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Steen, Paulus Potter and Frans...
. He was most interested in the works of Johannes Vermeer, Paulus Potter
Paulus Potter
Paulus Potter was a Dutch painter, specialized in animals in landscapes, usually with a low point of view. Before Potter died of tuberculosis, 28-years old, he succeeded in producing about a hundred paintings, working continuously.-Life:Few details are known of Potter's life...
, and Rembrandt, but studied paintings by German and Italian masters, as well. Sometimes he produced copies on commission. In this period, he also made detailed studies of animals, concentrating particularly on their legs, heads and snouts. De Zwart developed a fastidious painting style with a sober, predominantly brown palette.
Willem de Zwart lived and worked until 1894 in The Hague and from 1900 to 1905 in Amsterdam. His work has a wide range of subjects: landscapes, cityscapes, portraits and still life, rendered in a naturalistic or impressionist style. His work shows affinity with the people and city-oriented Amsterdam Impressionism. In his choice of subjects belonged to the Hague School and in his style and his exuberant use of color to the school of Amsterdam Impressionism
Amsterdam Impressionism
Amsterdam Impressionism was an art movement in imperialist Holland.The innovative ideas about painting of the French impressionists were introduced into the Netherlands by the artists of the Hague School. This new style of painting was also adopted in Amsterdam by the young generation of artists of...
. He is also known as the "Hague Breitner" because of the similarity of his work to that of George Hendrik Breitner
George Hendrik Breitner
George Hendrik Breitner wasa Dutch painter and photographer.-Biography:George Hendrik Breitner was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. From 1876–1880 he attended the Academy in the Hague where his extraordinary talent was rewarded on various occasions...
. He painted his landscapes, figure paintings and still lifes with smooth, bold brushstrokes. De Zwart applied the paint thickly, sometimes straight from the tube, with bright colors, exuberant reds, yellows and blues, giving his paintings special vibrancy.
Sources
- Sillevis, John and Tabak, Anne, The Hague School Book, Waanders Uitgegevers, Zwolle, 2004 (pp. 391-397)
- Marius, Gerharda Hermina, Dutch Painters of the 19th Century, The Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk (pp. 218-219)
External links
- A number of his works at mutualart.com
- Dutch Art in the Nineteenth Century/The Younger Masters of the Hague School.
See also
- Johannes Evert Hendrik AkkeringaJohannes Evert Hendrik AkkeringaJohannes Evert Hendrik Akkeringa was part of the second generation of the Hague School painters. Akkeringa is primarily known for his paintings and watercolours of women and playing children at the beach, women mending nets and intimate tea-time conversations.-Youth:Akkeringa was born in Blinjoe...