Jan Kleintjes

Dutch painter Jan Kleintjes spent part of his youth in Berlin, but attended a boarding school in Baarn in the Netherlands. He studied from 1891-94 at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam. Kleintjes married painter Hedwig Cecile Albertine van Osselen (1871-1936). He concentrated on painting figure scenes and cityscapes, but also painted portraits. He and his wife often exhibited together, and after her death Kleintjes painted still lifes of flowers in tribute to her. The professor and lawyer Philip Kleintjes (1867-1938) was his half-brother.

An image of his submitted painting Zonnespel could not be traced. But there is a contemporary description, which also laments the distance to sports of many pictures: “The painter Kleintjes sent a naked nymph to a brook in the forest. At first glance, it will not become clear to everyone what sport the dear child is doing: The creek is unfit for swimming; but since the picture was intended for the exhibition of the Games, the painter called it Game of the Sun.”