1871 Leiden – 1956 The Hague
Still Life with Lantern
oil on canvas, 80 x 94 cm
signed with the artist’s monogram lower right: HB
circa 1893-5
provenance
- estate of the artist, inv.no. 17/B/6;
- Mr. Floris Bremmer and Ms. Annie Bremmer-Hollmann, by descent from the artist, The Hague;
- Ms. Annie Bremmer-Hollmann’s estate sale, Christie’s, Amsterdam, 22 may 1991, lot 483;
- Samuel Josefowitz, Pully, Switzerland, acquired the at the sale above.
exhibited
- The Hague, Gemeentemuseum, Verzameling H. P. Bremmer, March-April 1950, no. 20;
- Assen, Provincial Museum Drenthe Drents Museum, Stichting Schone Kunsten rond 1900, loan term loan until 1991;
- Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum and Lausanne, Fondation de l’Hermitage, Pointillisme, Sur les traces de Seurat, september 1997- june 1998 (ex cat).
The remarkable composition of Still Life with Lantern features a lantern, an oil lamp, jugs, bottles, a tea kettle and a glass on a table. Those inconspicuous objects belonged to Bremmer who kept them at his atelier (see fig. 1). The small table is almost covered by the objects. Their shapes partly overlap each and the spectator perceives them as a group. They consist of different materials which have in common that they have a shiny or light reflecting surface. Bremmer used the same objects for several different still life compositions.
Grounded in the fin de siecle and the religion and mysticism that pervaded it, Bremmer experienced art in spiritual terms. According to him a painting should reveal the true essence of things beyond their visual appearance. Bremmer therefore decided to paint simple everyday objects. The artistic transformation and visualization of an artist’s emotions are more important than the painted subject. Bremmer often mentioned that beauty is not a characteristic of natural things. In his opinion a painting could only be beautiful when the spectator could experience through form, color, composition and lines the same emotions as the artist.
Still Life with Lantern was painted in a pointillist style. This radical new painting technique – developed in France during the 1880’s – was based on scientific color theory . Artists applied small dots of color in patterns to form an image. The technique relies on the ability of the spectator’s eye and mind to blend the color spots into a fuller range of tones.
Jan Toorop, the only Dutch member of Les Vingt and co-founder of the Haagse Kunstkring curated Exposition d’oeuvres de quelgues membres des XX et de l’Association pour l’art in The Hague during the summer of 1892. It was the first time that besides many works byBelgian Neo Impressionists the pointillist paintings by the main exponent of this new tendency in France, Georges Seurat, were shown in the Netherlands. The exhibition was a revelation for many Dutch visitors who were used to the relatively dark paintings by the Dutch Impressionist’s from The Hague School. Soon after this exhibition Hendricus Bremmer became one of the first artists together with Joseph Aarts, Jan Vijlbrief and Jan Toorop to apply pointillism in the Netherlands. Bremmer, Vijlbrief and Aarts worked in Leiden and presented themselves as a new generation of artists who were not afraid of stylistically breaking with the past. Their pointillist paintings focus on still life and landscape motives. Due to Vijlbrief’s suicide and different career opportunities for the two other artists, the pointillist movement in the Netherlands came to an abrupt end in 1895.
The present painting was almost hundred years in the possession of Bremmer’s family when Samuel Josefowitz acquired it in 1991. Over the last decades Josefowitz built an important collection of modern art. This collection included many pointillist paintings by the leading Neo Impressionists.
Photo: RKD The Hague
Careful inspection shows beside the jug prominent on the floor in the foreground, the water kettle, oil lamp and bottle in the background.
Hendricus Bremmer had an interesting career. The multitalented artist was a taught draftsman and painter. In circa 1896 the young Bremmer gave up his professional career as an artist to work as an art journalist and art teacher. In the following years he became also active as an art agent, art dealer, publisher and curator. He had become one of the most influential figures within the art scene in the Netherlands in the first half of the twentieth century.
From 1893-95 the young painter Bremmer had his atelier at the attic of his parents’ hotel Hotel Rijnland in Leiden. By then Bremmer was already very much interested in contemporary French literature and poetry. He enjoyed debating life stance with others. His atelier became a cultural hotspot visited by national and international painters and writers a.o. Henry van de Velde, Theo van Rysselberghe, as well as writers Joséphin ‚Sar‘ Péladan and August Vermeylen. At the time Bremmer declined invitations to exhibit at the Salon de Rose + Croix and Les XX exhibitions. Some of his international visitors came on Toorop’s recommendation who worked in the early 1890’s in the artist colony of Katwijk aan Zee’s only a few kilometers from Leiden.
In 1896 Bremmer started to teach as a Leraar Praktische Aesthetica, a teacher in art and aesthetics. He taught small groups of students most of them coming from prominent elite families. Those lessons were an enormous success. His teaching material did not only consist of reproductions. He also showed original drawings, paintings and sculptures in his lessons. Some of the works belonged to his own art collection that he was putting together. The outspoken Bremmer challenged his students, who also enjoyed spending time together with like-minded peers, to look at and think about art. Within years Bremmer was teaching throughout the Netherlands and thus created a powerful network which constituted the basis of his work as an art advisor. Quite a few of his students got inspired and started to collect art. Bremmer advised them on their acquisitions. He operated as an art consultant and as an art dealer. The most famous student who became an art collector is Helene Kröller Müller. She was one of the wealthiest citizens in the Netherlands when she joined Bremmer’s lessons in 1909. Bremmer became her art agent and they assembled the most important collection of modern art in the Netherlands, nowadays the collection of the Kröller Müller Museum.
Bremmer was one of the first who understood and acknowledged the importance of Vincent van Gogh. He was at the top of list of artists that Bremmer promoted. Bremmer contributed to Van Gogh’s popularity and rising fame at the beginning of the twentieth century. He owned seventy paintings and drawings by Van Gogh in 1883. As a result of Bremmer’s advice The Kröller Müller collection now features ninety of paintings and hundred eighty drawings by Van Gogh. It is the second largest collection of works by this artist in the world.
Bremmer published several books and magazines on art throughout his career. His success, fame and influence lured many contemporary artists towards him. Among them were Bart van der Leck, Jan and Charley Toorop, Jan Sluiters, Chris Beekman, Johan Thorn Prikker, Dirk Nijland and many others. Many of them he supported. His help varied from giving advise, providing introductions, publishing about their art, selling their work or supporting them financially.