Charles Leickert

Anonymous sale, Amsterdam, Christie's, 6 April 1982, lot 182;

With Kunsthandel Wim de Boer, Alkmaar;

Where acquired by the present owner.

W. van der Laan, ‘Charles Leickert, ‘Kopieerlust des dagelijkschen levens?’, in Tableau, 1983, pp. 390–95;

W. Laanstra, ‘Charles Leickert: Een meesterlijk adept’, in Kunstwerk, 1995, pp. 30–33;

H.J. Kraaij, Charles Leickert 1816–1907: Painter of the Dutch Landscape, Schiedam 1996, p. 55, no. 32, reproduced in colour p. 55;

W. Laanstra, Andreas Schelfhout 1787–1870, Amsterdam 1995, p. 44, fig. 3, reproduced in colour p. 44.

Painted in 1849, this work relates to a similar composition entitled Winter op het IJ voor Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), painted a year later. Depicting the same scene at slightly different stages of sunset, both compositions are highly detailed studies of light and colour, and the atmospheric changes between seasons and times of day, aspects that were frequently explored by Leickert. The most notable difference is that the Rijksmuseum work is painted in winter, showing skating figures on the frozen river.

Charles Leickert, was born in Brussels in 1816 to German parents. The family moved shortly afterwards to The Hague where his father was Chamberlain at the court of King Willem I. Leickert's childhood was not a happy one; his four siblings died before he was eleven and he was orphaned by the age of fourteen. The orphanage that took him in continued to pay the fees for his tuition at The Hague Drawing Academy, where his father had enrolled him before his death. Leickert studied there between 1827 and 1834, and was a pupil of Bartholomeus van Hove (1790–1880). Upon leaving the academy, he joined the studio of Wijnand Nuyen (1813–1839) where he continued his studies of Dutch cityscape and landscape painting. He made his debut at the General Exhibition of Dutch Living Masters in The Hague in 1839 and soon after became an apprentice to Andreas Schelfhout (1787–1870). In 1848, he moved to Amsterdam in order to further establish his reputation; the years that followed were some of the most successful of his career. As well as exhibiting regularly, Leickert joined the Arti et Amicitiae art society and in 1856 he was elected to the board of governors of Amsterdam's Royal Academy of Fine Art. On a trip to Mainz, Germany, in 1860, he met his future wife, Apollonia Schneider, marrying her that same year and later moving to Mainz in 1887, where he remained until his death.