Gerharda Hermina Marius

“ And so it came about that a race of painters arose between 1885 and 1890, formed at the Amsterdam Academy under the guidance of the conscientious Allebé, who impressed a whole generation of younger men with the stamp of his culture. The men of this race or generation soon showed that they were determined to seek a road for themselves, each according to his own nature, rather than follow feebly in the footsteps of the Hague masters whom they all so greatly admired. ”

“ Moes, born in Amsterdam in 1856, the painter of Laren interiors, although a pupil of Allebé and Richard Burnier, deliberately chose Veth as her leader, both in the modelling of the features as in general style, with the result that the expression of her women and mothers often acquires something very sensitive. Dutchwoman though she be, her talent often leans towards the German, inasmuch as her work is painted for the sake of the expression of the subject rather than for the sake of the general effect or of the colour. ”

“ Witsen also lapses occasionally, as a painter, into the style in which the last word has been spoken by Breitner and this is not the style in which one would prefer to see him work; but I am inclined to think that this will prove to belong to a transition-period, for a man who has been able to produce such master-pieces as the London etchings and water-colours must needs have at his beck both ideas and powers which he will set forth for our admiration in his own good time. ”

“ He was one of the first in our country to make a study of the daily life of the streets. Take, for example, his Peepshow; or a barrel-organ, in a back slum, with a group of fat Jewesses and street-girls dancing to its strains, amid effects of light that remind the spectator of The Night Watch. ”

“ If I were to compare the two most successful portrait-painters of late days, Haverman and Veth, I should say that, in the drawn portrait, Haverman's powers are more virile, the focussing of the features on the whole more sure and the likeness often sharper, whereas Veth, who searches rather for the mind of his sitter, draws out not so much his strength as his gentleness and goodness. That there are exceptions goes without saying: Veth's portrait of Dr. ”

“ It goes without saying that his method was most successful when applied to eminent men who had distinguished themselves in any sphere of activity.
In 1892, the portraits of well-known contemporaries published in the Amsterdamsch Weekblad attracted general attention. They were lithographs by Veth, the painter, who was just becoming known at the Hague, but who had already made a definite name for himself in Amsterdam through the personal note of his portraits. ”

“ Birnie, Richard Bisschop, the artist's wife until, in 1897, Haverman began to draw portraits of "celebrities of the day" for the then newly-started (and now no longer existing) monthly, Woord en Beeld. And, although wood-cuts rarely do justice to an artist and it is to this day to be regretted that he did not himself prepare the lithographs for the press still it is the original drawings for these reproductions that have made him a permanent name. ”