Notes

Hendrik Jan Wolter (1873 – 1952) is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of the French Impressionistic style in Holland. His unusually broad brushstroke and his bright and colourful palette granted him the nickname “Dutch Impressionist”.

After his training in Paris in the last decade of the ninetieth-century, Wolter frequently started to paint “en plein air”, resulting in various cityscapes in The Netherlands and intimate scenes of locals in historic costume visiting the market, peasants and ports filled with the hustle and bustle of fishermen at work. Of all his subjects Wolter favoured the latter.

Wolter was born in 1873 in Amsterdam but moved to Amersfoort with his family at the age of 12. In 1895 he moved to Antwerp where he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts. During his academic studies in Antwerp and subsequent training in Paris, he was strongly influenced by the French Impressionists and the work of Pointillists like Seurat, Signac and Theo van Rijsselberghe.

In 1899 Wolter moved from Paris back to a small village near Amersfoort in the Netherlands. From 1908 he spent many summers in London and along the English coast line of Cornwall, Devon and Yorkshire, to paint very impressive atmospheric scenes in the small harbour towns of Polperro, Lynmouth and St. Ives. Shortly before WWI, Wolter moved from Laren into a studio at the Amsteldijk 47 in Amsterdam, with a magnificent view on the Amstel River and the bridge called ‘Hoge Sluis’. He gradually departed from the divisionistic style which he previously used. Although playful brushstrokes continued to dominate his luminous paint palette, he started to apply his paint in impastuous layers.