WILLEM VAN DEN BERG
(The Hague 1886 – 1970 Amsterdam)
A Self-portrait, c. 1900
Oil on canvas, laid down on panel, 17.5 x 23.5 cm
signed lower right and indistinctly dated: Willem vd Berg
Provenance:
Private collection, The Netherlands;
By descent to a private collection in Germany (three generations);
Kunst und Antiquitäten Auction, Kastern, Hanover, 30 November 2019, lot 33.
The young Willem van den Berg positioned his mirror just below sight-height to study and paint his appearance and facial expressions. As a result, the artist is looking a slightly downwards and appears self-conscious and confident at his painting. His typical analytical gaze is characteristic for self-portraiture. Van den Berg painted a few self-portraits throughout his career. One of them, showing him probably only a few years later, is now part of the Rijksmuseum’s collection (fig. 1). By my knowledge the present painting is one of Van den Berg’s earliest known self-portraits.
Painted around 1900, the painting relates stylistically with the Impressionist Avant-Garde movement in the Netherlands who made fame in the 80’s. Painters such as George Hendrik Breitner, Isaac Israels and Willem Witsen painted their ‚impressions’ with rapid brushwork in comparison with the traditional and more precise naturalistic academic style of painting of the past. The young Van den Berg was inspired by the Impressionists their work and success. They were connected with the literature movement De Tachtigers or The Movement of Eighty. De Tachtigers considered art as the most personal expression of the most individual emotion. Artists should not be influenced by anyone but themselves during the process of making art. Therefore it is no surprise, that self-portraits proved a popular genre among Impressionist painters. (see fig. 2).
fig. 1 Willem van den Berg, Self-portrait, 1908-10, oil on canvas on panel, 23 x 18.2 cm, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, inv.no. SK-A-3288, Gift of Mr and Mrs Kessler-Hülsmann, Kapelle op den Bosch. fig. 2 Georg Hendrik Breitner, Self-portrait with Pince-Nez, c. 1882, oil on panel, 45 x 31.4 cm, Kunstmuseum The Hague, inv.no. 0331969 – fig. 3 Matthijs Maris, Self-Portrait, 1860, oil on cardboard, 27 x 18 cm, Kröller-Möller Museum, Otterlo, inv.no. KM 106.726.
The composition of Van den Berg’s self-portrait contains remarkable similarities with the Dutch painter Matthijs Maris’s self-portrait from 1860 (fig. 3). Maris belongs to the generation painters prior to De Tachtigers. The highly innovative and international acknowledged Maris was a sort of a cult-figure among later generations of Dutch painters. He was famous for refusing to adapt his innovative and uncommercial style on demand of influential art critics and art dealers in London, Paris and in the Netherlands. Maris received harsh and negative responses from the leading art critics for his self-portrait at the time.
Van der Berg painted his self-portrait early in his career. His applied loose technique differs from his realistic style and precise style for which he is best-known. After the Second World War interest and appreciation of Realism declined in the Netherlands. Luckily the artist’s work was appreciated at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean during this period. His work was exhibited and sold at galleries in New York, Chicago and San Francisco in the 1960’s. Therefore nowadays a part of his oeuvre reappears on the art market in the USA.
The son of the painter and printmaker Andries van den Berg, who taught at the Royal Academy in The Hague, Willem van den Berg also spent time in the studio of his cousin, the painter and painting conservator Carel de Wild. Soon after completing his training in The Hague, Van den Berg began exhibiting his work in group shows and solo exhibitions. In 1913 he met the painter Willem van Konijnenburg, whose style was to prove influential on the young artist, and began to paint the fishermen, women and ships on the beach at Scheveningen.
He also painted still life, landscapes, genre scenes and portraits, as well as studies of birds and animals in the zoo of Amsterdam. Van den Berg took study trips to Belgium, Italy, England, and worked with the Barbizon artists in France. Afterwards he became a teacher at the Eerste Nederlandse Vrije Studio in The Hague. In 1926 he exhibited a painting at the Jeu de Paume, Paris. In 1938 he settled in Amsterdam, where he was appointed professor at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten. From there he made frequent visits to the small picturesque fishing village of Volendam, where he found numerous subjects to paint and draw. He was a respected member of the artist’s societies Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam and Pulchri Studio in The Hague. Van den Berg worked well outside the Avant-Garde trends of the art of the 20th century.