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Hendrik Johannes (later Jan Hendrik) Weissenbruch was born
in The Hague. At sixteen he took drawing-lessons and later
followed evening classes at the Hague Academy. His father
was an amateur painter and collected work by artists such
as Andreas Schelfhout. Schelfhout's influence can be seen
in Weissenbruch's early, vast landscapes, painted in
precise detail. His magnificent, cloudy skies show his
admiration for the seventeenth-century artist Jacob van
Ruisdael, whose work he saw at an early age in the
Mauritshuis in The Hague. An impressive portrayal of sky
and light was one of Weissenbruch's strongest points. He
painted in the open air and let himself be guided as far
as possible by nature itself. 'What I really want is
to get nature itself on the canvas,' Weissenbruch once
said. 'Sometimes nature can make a real impact. If I can
get that same impact later, I can draw and paint what I
have seen. I make a sketch with a few charcoal scribbles.
At home I conjure it up in paints.'.
During the 1860s Weissenbruch often worked in the country
around Gouda, near Nieuwkoop and Noorden. His touch became
freer and he concentrated more on the atmospheric
impression of the moment, like other painters of the Hague
School. It was not until 1880 that his landscapes gained
wider recognition. As well as landscapes, Weissenbruch
also painted several interiors, still lifes and beach- and
seascapes, in both oils and watercolour. When
Weissenbruch was 76, he undertook his first foreign trip.
He visited the Barbizon area, at that time a Mecca for
modern landscape artists.
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