Willem Roelofs Dutch, 1822-1897

Willem Roelofs was born in Amsterdam on 10 March 1822. His father, Otto Willem Roelofs, was a stone manufacturer. After his first drawing lessons in Utrecht, Willem Roelofs ended up in The Hague as an apprentice to Hendrik van de Sande Bakhuyzen in 1840. In 1847, Roelofs was part of the group of young artists that founded the artistic society Pulchri Studio. In that same year, he moved to Brussels for personal reasons where he continued his artistic career without losing his ties to the Netherlands. He remained a member of Pulchri and provided his fellow artists with, sometimes, important contacts in the Belgian art circles. In 1855, he was one of the founders of the Société Belge des Aquarellistes and it was because of his doing that Matthijs Maris became an honorary member of this society. Following the Belgian aquarellist society, the Hollandsche Teeken-Maatschappij was founded in The Netherlands in 1876, consisting of a few prominent painters from the Hague School.

Between 1851 and 1855, Roelofs visited Barbizon and the nearby woods of Fontainebleau quite often. As was shown by his drawings, now in the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, he also went during those visits to the famous inn of Père Ganne, which was the pre-eminent meeting place of the painters of Ecole de Barbizon. It is unknown whether or not Roelofs came into personal contact with the Barbizon painters. From 1860 onwards, the paintings by Corot, Diaz de la Peña, Troyon, and Théodore Roussau were regularly shown at the Salon of Brussels. Roelofs did keep in touch with the painters of the Tervueren School. He even made a trip to London with Henri Hymans.

Roelofs was also important to the Hague School in another way because he taught Hendrik Willem Mesdag and Gabriël. Especially Mesdag, who had received no traditional education at a drawing academy, benefited a great deal from Roelofs’ teachings. Vincent van Gogh also contacted Roelofs in his time in Brussels, but Roelofs did not much like the idea of having Van Gogh as a student. He referred Vincent van Gogh to the academy for Fine Arts in Brussels where he enrolled. In 1887, Roelofs returned to the Netherlands. On his seventieth birthday, he was honoured by a few prominent Pulchri members. Jozef Israels painted his portrait at that occasion but Roelofs was not very happy with the result and donated the painting to the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.

Roelofs died in Antwerp in 1897 on his journey to Brussels.

Although Roelofs lived in Brussels for forty years, he went back to The Netherlands during the summer months every year to sketch and paint in his beloved polder landscape. He sometimes felt somewhat like an exile in Belgium. He wrote to his friend Verloren van Themaat: “When I have visited Holland, I am spoiled for a while and cannot seem to get used to staying here forever. One always remains a stranger here and I miss the support from others that one has in his country” (dated 1 October 1865).

Roelofs preferred working on small canvases, which he stretched on a panel or a small sized panel so he could make his notes in oil paint quickly when outdoors. In this respect, he was one of the true ‘plein-air’ painters of the Hague School, together with J. H. Weissenbruch and Anton Mauve, who also prepared their paintings in the open air. Roelofs kept his oil paint sketches in his studio and they served him as a source of inspiration and as a reminder for his sizeable pieces. He used a free and rough brushstroke for his oil paint sketches and passed over the excess details, as he did in this view of a ditch with a Dutch windmill. Willem Roelofs preferred working in the surroundings of Abcoude, Kortenhoef and Noorden and at the Nieuwkoopse Plassen. The polder landscape near The Hague in the direction of Voorburg and Voorschoten also appealed to him.