HENDRIK JOHANNES HAVERMAN (1857 - 1928)

 
 
A MOONLIT VIEW, GRANADA  (c.1889)
 
 
Signed & titled l.r.  Haverman / Granada
Oil on canvas
35.5 x 25.5 cm
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The present work dates to Havermans’ 1889 trip to North Africa via Granada, which yielded a rich vein of subject matter for the remainder of his career. 
 
 
 
Hendrik Havermans was born in Amsterdam, and studied at the Rijksakademie first before attending both the Academy in Antwerp and later Brussels. During this time, he also gave private lessons to three women who, because of their sex, were not permitted to enter the Rijksakademie: Edmée Broers, Meta Gosschalk, Maria Deline Schweistal and Pauline Suij, all of whom went on to become professional painters. 
 
 
Havermans worked across several media, painting portraits and landscapes, and was also a respected art critic in the Dutch press. He became one of his country’s more prominent artists around the turn of the century, and could count several prestigious private collectors among his patrons, including H.W. Mesdag, whose collection later formed the Mesdagmuseum in The Hague, and Teding van Berkhout, much of whose collection joined the Teylers Museum in Haarlem. 
 
 
 
By the time of his death, Havermans had been made an Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau, a Knight in the Order of Leopold of Belgium, a Knight of St Michael of Bavaria, and had also been awarded the Cross of Merit of Hungary. Johan de Meester wrote of the artist two years after his death that he was, ‘completely his own personality, a pure and interesting figure, who occupies a front place in the Dutch painting of his day.’