Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch Dutch, 1824-1903

Executed ca. 1887

Johannes Hendrik Weissenbruch was born in the Kazernestraat 112 in The Hague on 19 June 1824 as son of Johannes Weissenbruch and Johanna Hendrika Zaag. Although his grandfather was a barber and his father a chef and restaurant owner, artistic professions also occurred in his family. His cousin Jan Weissenbruch (1822-1880) was most famous and had established his name with his typically Dutch townscapes. Initially, Jan Weissenbruch was thought to be the greater of the two when compared to ‘J. H.’, as he was called later. Another cousin, Frederik Hendrik (1828-1887) was a prominent lithographer in his days, who often took care of the illustrations for the journal De Kunstkronyk. His two-year younger brother Frederik Johan was an engraver just like his uncle Daniël and his cousin Isaac. The father of ‘J. H.’ was an admirer of Andreas Schelfhout and Bart van Hove.

There is not much known about the life of Weissenbruch. He does not appear to have been a tormented artistic type with an eventful life, passionate love affairs or a controversial oeuvre. Nor did he live a nomadic life, he preferred working in or around the immediate vicinity of The Hague with a distinct inclination for the rural area near Dekkersduin.

J. H. Weissenbruch was someone who was known for his keen judgement and his good temper. He had once told the young Vincent van Gogh that they called him “the sword without mercy”. In the artistic circles of The Hague, he was also called the ‘merry Weiss’ as to distinguish him from his moodier cousin Jan.

Weissenbruch was one of the founders of the artistic society Pulchri Studio, which would later become the cradle of the Hague School. In contrast to the majority of painters of the Hague School like Jozef Israëls, who was chairman for three years (1875-1878), and H. W. Mesdag, who led the society for eighteen years, he never held a prominent position at Pulchri. Weissenbruch had only been the commissioner of the drawing hall of Pulchri from 1857 until 1861.

There is not much known about his education. In an interview on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday, he named J. J. Löw, who was a teacher at the Haagse Tekenacademie and Bart van Hove, who taught him evening classes, as his teachers. During the day, he worked at Van Hove’s workshop where the scenery for the Royal Theatre was painted. Weissenbruch was reported to have smeared the canvases “as with a broom”. As a student, he closely studied the landscapes by the 17^th-century Dutch masters in the Mauritshuis, especially those by Potter and Ruisdael. Weissenbruch himself said in the interview mentioned before: “You would want nature itself on your canvas. Some of the old ones have succeeded in this. I remember that I as a boy was struck dumb when standing in front of the paintings of the earlier Dutch in our museums because of the way they let nature speak to you. If someone taught me how to perceive nature, it was by those old masters, yet mostly by nature itself”.

His nature studies initially focussed on the dune area around The Hague, the Kennemer Duinen near Haarlem and the hills near Arnhem. Weissenbruch often chose a panoramic perspective. Panoramic landscapes were fashionable among the Dutch Romantic painters and we find examples of it in Andreas Schelfhout’s and Wijnand Nuyen’s oeuvres. However, the narrative and anecdotic elements are lacking in Weissenbruch’s work. The only purpose of his staffages is to indicate the spaciousness and the proportions of the landscape even more. Roughly around 1870, a change in his approach becomes noticeable. The sizes become more extensive and the themes vary more. In 1876, he was one of the first who was approached to become a member of the Hollandsche Teeken-Maatschappij, the circle of aquarellists of Pulchri Studio. Weissenbruch was one of the most gifted aquarellists of the Hague School. He was one of the first to recognise the exceptional talent of Vincent van Gogh and recommended him to Anton Mauve. Victor Bauffe and Théophile de Bock were among Weissenbruch’s students. When Weissenbruch turned seventy, they offered him an honorary exhibition but Weissenbruch, who was averse from ceremonies, declined because he claimed he still felt like a young man. At his seventy-fifth birthday, the honorary exhibition finally took place and was very successful. In 1900, he visited Barbizon for the first time. Weissenbruch died in 1903. Not until the later years of his life was his high quality work valued accordingly. Weissenbruch was probably the most gifted among the painters of the Hague School.

This Strandgezicht has not been dated, but is generally dated roughly around 1885. As for the use of colour and layout, it relates most to Strandgezicht (canvas, 73 x 103 cm) from the collection of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, which is dated 1887. In this year, the Vereeniging tot het Oprichten van een Museum voor Moderne Kunst te ‘s Gravenhage bought the last named painting directly from Weissenbruch for the sum of fl. 1200,-.

The innovation in Weissenbruch’s work had finally manifested itself. With broad strokes, Weissenbruch achieves a vast and open effect, in which the many shades of the clouds take up the largest part of the composition. Here, the moment is depicted when the fish is sold on the beach after the ‘bomschuiten’ have delivered their cargo. The business around fishing is however not the most important to Weissenbruch because the figures are brought into a grand coastscape in which light and air play the leading part. More than ever is Weissenbruch capable of reaching a harmony of hues. Weissenbruch did not choose a high vantage point as he did in his earlier works, yet the impression of vast space remains.

The Strandgezicht comes from the Preyer collection, who was an art dealer who made sure by a donation in 1926 that the Hague School was also represented in the Louvre (now Musée d’Orsay) by for instance, Bosboom, Israëls and Jacob Maris.