Jan Goedhart

Jan Goedhart was born in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), but he moved to the Netherlands at age 6. In 1911, he was admitted to the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (Royal Academy of Graphic Arts) in Amsterdam, which he completed after an interruption during World War I. In the 1920s, he settled in The Hague, earning a living as a portrait painter. He also painted cityscapes, landscapes, flowers, interiors, seascapes, still lifes, and mythological and biblical scenes. One critic even called him “an all-round athlete” among painters. He joined the group “Pulchri Studio”, which also included Kees van Dongen.

Following his marriage in 1930, Goedhart and his wife Jenny moved to Germany. There, Goedhart turned to painting landscapes and, maritime pictures, his first love. Following the conclusion of World War II, the couple returned to the Netherlands, where he fully turned his attention to seascapes. Goedhart regularly travelled with the Dutch Navy to produce images, his paintings proving popular with naval and other maritime organizations. For example, Cowes Week, the title of his 1948 entry, is a traditional sailing regatta off the Isle of Wight. He painted the ship motifs in a naturalistic-impressionistic manner, mostly in cool, gray-toned colors with dark-tinted lighting.