{"id":19660,"date":"2020-05-16T00:53:16","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T23:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=19660"},"modified":"2020-05-16T00:53:16","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T23:53:16","slug":"the-art-of-henk-bremmer-1871-1956","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2020\/05\/16\/the-art-of-henk-bremmer-1871-1956\/","title":{"rendered":"The art of Henk Bremmer, 1871\u20131956"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bremmer3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Landscape with Mill (1894; Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden).<\/em><\/p>\n

This week’s post is another by Sander Bink about a Dutch artist whose work may be unfamiliar to those outside the Netherlands. As before, Henk Bremmer was an artist whose work I hadn’t seen until now. My thanks again to Sander for the post.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Hendricus (Henk) Bremmer was a Dutch painter, art critic, collector and art dealer. Nowadays he is mostly known for his role in forming the collection of what has become the Kr\u00f6ller-M\u00fcller Museum. He was enough of an authority on Dutch Modernist art from the early twentieth century to be known as “de Kunstpaus”\u2014”the Pope of the Arts”. Bremmer was an early and important advocate of Mondriaan’s work, but the Bremmer landscapes I will focus on here are much more Modernist than those being made by Mondriaan at about the same time. Although Bremmer’s paintings from the 1890s and from around 1900 are seen as early examples of Dutch pointillism, readers of this blog will probably appreciate them for their Symbolist qualities. They are usually not seen as such but to me the Symbolist affinities are quite clear. That Bremmer was acquainted with Symbolist theory is apparent from his being an avid reader of the French Symbolists and a great admirer of Huysmans’ \u00c0 rebours<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"bremmer2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Windmill (1894; private collection).<\/em><\/p>\n

In the 1890s Bremmer was friends with Dutch (Decadent-Symbolist) writers and painters such as Henri Borel, Henri van Daalhoff, Jan Toorop and Johan Thorn Prikker. When Josephin P\u00e9ladan, the High Priest of Symbolism, visited the Netherlands in 1892 he stayed with Bremmer and invited him to exhibit at his Rose+Croix shows in Paris. The exhibition never materialised but one can easily understand the mystical qualities P\u00e9ladan must have appreciated in Bremmers paintings. Like many Dutch intellectuals of the period Bremmer was strongly influenced by Spinoza\u2019s mysticism. But whatever the source of his art, the landscapes here depicted can be considered “Symbolist landscapes”, like those being painted in France by Alphonse Osbert<\/a> or Charles Filiger<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"bremmer5.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A View of a Farmhouse (c.1895).<\/em><\/p>\n

As for Dutch artists of the period, Bremmer’s landscapes are similar to those of Simon Moulijn<\/a> or Jan Voerman (about whom I hope to write here in the near future). They all take “typically Dutch” subject matter which they invest with what you could call a modern spirituality or mysticism.<\/p>\n

\"bremmer4.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Landscape with Trees at the IJssel (1912; Private collection).<\/em><\/p>\n

\"bremmer1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Pine-trees at Harskamp (1912; Kr\u00f6ller-M\u00fcller Museum, Otterlo).<\/em><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The art of Jacob Bendien, 1890\u20131933<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Henricus Jansen, 1867\u20131921<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Antoon van Welie, 1866\u20131956<\/a>
\n\u2022 The art of Simon Moulijn, 1866\u20131948<\/a>
\n\u2022 Ren\u00e9 Gockinga revisited<\/a>
\n\u2022 Gockinga\u2019s Bacchanal and an unknown portrait of Fritz Klein<\/a>
\n\u2022 More from the Decadent Dutch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Landscape with Mill (1894; Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden). This week’s post is another by Sander Bink about a Dutch artist whose work may be unfamiliar to those outside the Netherlands. As before, Henk Bremmer was an artist whose work I hadn’t seen until now. My thanks again to Sander for the post. * * * … Continue reading “The art of Henk Bremmer, 1871\u20131956”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,44,45],"tags":[10618,10619,10614,10615,10616,1227,10617,10620,649,3964,3961,9484],"class_list":["post-19660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-painting","category-symbolists","tag-alphonse-osbert","tag-charles-filiger","tag-henk-bremmer","tag-henri-borel","tag-henri-van-daalhoff","tag-jan-toorop","tag-jan-toorop-and-johan-thorn-prikker","tag-jan-voerman","tag-josephin-peladan","tag-rene-gockinga","tag-sander-bink","tag-simon-moulijn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-576","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}