Martin Monnickendam

Martin Monnickendam was a Dutch painter and draftsman. He was educated in 1891-93 at the Academy of Fine Arts and was a pupil of Felix Meritis in Amsterdam. Subsequently, he lived in Paris for two years from 1895. Monnickendam worked in the genres of painting, watercolors, etchings, drawing and lithography. He often painted subjects of the city of Amsterdam or Jewish themes, but also figures, portraits, landscapes, animals, and still lifes. In Amsterdam he belonged to several art associations, including Arti et Amicitiae and the Painters’ Guild of Sint Lukas. During the 1920s he traveled in various European countries. In 1934 he was appointed an officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau. He died of pneumonia in 1943 shortly before his planned deportation to a concentration camp.

The painting submitted in 1928 may have been De Biljartwedstrijd, although it was already painted in 1907. Today it is usually titled Billiard Academy. It shows the hall “De Vereeniging” in Amsterdam, where under the guise of a “billiard academy” matches between so-called “professionals” took place. The public could bet on these games. The painting depicts the moment of the winners’ pay-off. Since it is marked in the catalog as a “painting”, it was probably the version oil on canvas (120 x 200 cm), which is in the Amsterdam Museum. An almost identical watercolor also exists. A much younger painting is “Concourse Hippique tijdens de Olympische Spelen in het Olympisch Stadion in 1928”, submitted as At the Olympic Games, which was created in the same year 1928. It is a watercolor/pastel of 63.2 x 83 cm. Monnickendam’s first participation was in 1924 with the painting De amazon, also in oil on canvas (200 x 140 cm) from 1915. The painting from the Stedelijk Museum Zutphen shows his pupil and later colleague Margot van Hasselt (1879–1935).