Blossoms and Bugs
Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Ledge

Oil-on-canvas, signed on reverse

Painting: 20 ¼” x 17 ¾”
Frame: 26 ¾” x 23” SAFA/11078

Working the Field

Oil on canvas. signed lower right

Painting17" x 24 3/4"
Frame: 28" x 35 1/4"

Ten Kate was known for his landscapes, beach scenes and genre paintings. Born in Amsterdam, he was the son of Johannes Mari ten Kate, under whom he most likely studied. He lived and worked in the Hague and was a member of the Hague Artists’ Society and the Pulchri Studio (latin:"for the study of beauty"), a Dutch art society, art institution and art studio based in the Hague. The countryside around the coastal town of the Hague provided a rural environment and an unspoiled landscape which attracted many young artists of the nineteenth century eager to escape the strictures of academic art guilds.

Floral Still life with Tulips, Iris and Roses in a Glass Jar with Butterflies, Insects and a Shell

Oil on panel (slight warp)

Painting Size: 19.75” x 14.75”
Frame Size: 27 ” x 23”

Landscape with Farmhouse and Sheep

Oil on canvas, signed lower left.

Painting Size: 11” x 14”
Frame Size: 16.5 ” x 19.5”

Koekkoek was a student of his father the artist Johannes Hermanus Koekkoek and of Schelfhout Van Os at the Academy of Amsterdam. He married the daughter of the painter J.A. Daiwaille. In 1845 the Dutch king commissioned numerous paintings from Koekkoek. He travelled around Belgium and frequently visited the environs of the Rhine and the Moselle. In 1841 he founded an academy of drawing in Clèves where artists such as Frederick Kruseman, Lodewijk Kliejn and Johann Bernard Klombeck came under his tutelage and gave rise to the school of landscape painting referred to as 'Cleves Romanticism'. He took part in Paris exhibitions and won medals in 1840 and 1845. He was a member of the Academies of Petersburg and of Rotterdam. His paintings reveal his careful study of Dutch 17th century painters and the romantic tradition of the Dutch masters.

Perhaps the artist of this painting studied at the Clèves academy as evidenced by his adherence to Koekkooek’s admonition to observe qualities of light and following Koekkoek’s example of painting rural environments with tiny figures.

Sources:
Benezit, E. "Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs"
Thieme-Becker, ed. "Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler vonder Antike bis zu Gegenwart"
Sheen, ed. "Lexicon Nederlandse Beeldende Kunstenaars 1750-1950"

Oil on panel, signed and dated: “1865.”

Painting size: 9” x 6.75”
Frame size: 14.5” x 12.5”

Petrus Theodorus Van Wyngaerdt (also spelled Wyngaerdt or Wijngaerdt) was born in Rotterdam. A student of J.H. Van de Laar, he painted genre scenes and portraits, as did his older brother, painter Anthonie Jacobus Van Wyngaerdt.

In "Eavesdropping", Van Wyngaerdt depicts a well-known theme from popular 19th-century French and Dutch prints-- a Roccoco figure listening at a door while a private conversation (or event) is underway. The women’s yellow skirt, pink bodice and lacy cap suggest that she is a lady (of sorts) and her plump arms, pretty features and sly expression suggest what may be going on behind closed doors.

Van Wyngaerdt’s work can be found in the collections of the Haarlem Museum. He is listed in Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs (Bénézit, 1999).