Charles Henri Joseph Leickert - works of Charles Leickert art,painting sale, paintings, Dutch painter, artist, biography

Charles Leickert

Charles Leickert biography

Charles Henri Joseph Leickert was born in Brussels in 1816. Charles Henri Joseph Leickert was a talented artist and became known for Charles Leickert paintings of town scenes and landscapes. Charles Henri Joseph Leickert studied under and was highy influenced by the great townscape artists of his day, Wijhandus Johannes Josephus Nuyen, Andreas Schelfhout and Johannes van Hove. his use of light and colour in Charles Leickert paintings is particularly striking.

Charles Henri Joseph Leickert specialised in town views and landscapes. He was particularly talented in capturing the effects of light. Charles Leickert art are characterized by their bright colors and summary brushwork.

Works of Charles Leickert is represented in many museums including the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam and the Central Museum, Utrecht .

Landscapes and cityscapes were a very popular art form in the Netherlands during the nineteenth century. After the end of the French occupation in 1815, a new sense of pride emerged in all things Dutch. In the fine art, many artists rejected the more classical French landscape, aiming instead for Dutch landscape with rivers and windmills and looked back to the ‘Golden Age’ of the seventeenth century for inspiration. Charles Henri Joseph Leickert worked during this period and became known for  landscape and cityscape Charles Leickert paintings. “He painted the cluttered banks of the Amstel River, a picturesque embankment near a ferry to the city of Dordrecht, and ice scenes with Dutch windmills and skaters. Charles Leickert artist nevertheless succeeded in evoking a highly Romantic mood by drenching some of Charles Leickert painting sale in an almost supernatural light and, by his sublime rendering of the evening sun.”

Around the mid 1830s, Leickert joined the studio of Wijnand Nuyen (1813-1839), the painter who specialized in landscape, townscape, and marine paintings. As one of the few Dutch artists of the nineteenth century to have been influenced by the French Romantic Movement, Nuyen became influential even though Charles Henri Joseph Leickert died at the young age of twenty-seven. While the painter studied with him for a short period, Nuyen’s tutelage is evident in his choice of picturesque townscapes with lively details such as laundry and pigeons (Villagers And Horse at a Tollgate, c. 1840). In 1839, the same year that Nuyen died, Charles Leickert painter made his debut at the General Exhibition of Dutch Living Masters in The Hague with a painting entitled The Crossing of a Ferry, which was purchased by the Society for the Promotion of Visual Art. During this period, his subjects consisted mostly of simple combinations of architecture, some figures, and nature, and “his washed out colors and lighting recall Bart van Hove.” (Kraaij, pg. 26) However, one of early Charles Leickert paintings depicting a beach scene with “the tranquility of late moment and of the figures who look out on the sea beneath the pink and yellow sky,” reflected the Romantic style of the first half of the nineteenth century. (Kraaij, pg. 28)
his next and most influential teacher was Andreas Schelfhout (1787-1870), the renowned landscape artist best known for his winter scenes. Shelfhout was considered “the Dutch Claude Lorain (French, 1602-1682),” and was a popular teacher who attracted an impressive list of students. Beside Charles Leickert Dutch artist, Johannes Hoppenbrouwers (1819-1866), Nicolaas Roosenboom (1805-1880) and Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819-1891) attended Shelfhout’s studio. It was under Shelfhout that Leickert diligently learned to paint winter scenes, and rapidly absorbed his master’s working methods. However, as noted by Kraaij, Charles Leickert may have “looked too much to Schelfhout to broaden his own horizons.” (pg. 31) The fact that Charles Leickert paintings followed closely those of Shelfhout was also noticed by art critics at the time, as one observed “A River view by Mr. Leickert, in The Hague, is well drawn and painted, soft and charming in tone, in the manner of Shelfhout, whom he fortunately seems to be emulating.” (Kraaij, pg. 31)

By that time, Leickert was fully involved in the artistic scene of The Hague, and enjoyed many friendships with a number of artists that Charles Leickert Dutch artist met during his years at the Academy and the studios of his teachers. Among them were Salomon (“Sam”) Verveer (1813-1876), Antonie Waldrop (1803-1866), and Charles Rochussen (1814-1894). His friendship with the latter led to a collaboration in a Charles Leickert painting sale entitled Dutch Winter Scene (1845), which proved beneficial to Leickert in more ways than one. Rochussen was a more established artist therefore the value of this work was greatly enhanced. The Charles Leickert painting sale was sold for eleven hundred guilders, a very large sum of money for him in 1845, as Charles Leickert art usually were sold for five hundred guilders. He also gained artistically as his “figures and animals at the time were relatively stiff and often unfinished.”

In 1848 Charles Leickert painter moved to Amsterdam where he resided until 1887. He wanted to establish himself as an independent painter and knew that Amsterdam offered more opportunities for artists to exhibit and sell their work. Charles Henri Joseph Leickert became a member of the artist’s society Arti et Amicitiae, and soon got involved in the artistic life there, after reuniting with a number of his artist friends. One of them was Rochussen, who lived in the same house as Leickert for some time. Once more, they collaborated on a number of Charles Leickert paintings, such as Beach near Scheviningen (1848) and Cityscape in Winter (1849), the first of this genre that he exhibited. In 1856, the artist joined the Board of Governors of the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Amsterdam.

The years following his arrival to Amsterdam until the 1870s were his most successful. During that period, Charles Leickert Dutch artist produced a wider variety of themes that included more beach and dune scenes. In addition, as Kraaij observed “Charles Leickert paintings are carefully finished; elements such as vegetation and background are executed in particular detail. The color contrasts are often surprising and the rendering of chiaroscuro is magnificent.” (pg. 54) Among the Works of Charles Leickert produced during that period were View or Het IJ with Amsterdam in the Background (1849) and View of Amsterdam in the Winter with Setting Sun, which was well received in the press. An art critic observed:

Charles Leickert painter has long managed to situate himself outside the school of Shelfhout-that is, to learn, to observe with his own eyes. His View of Amsterdam in the Winter with Setting Sun is one of those Charles Leickert paintings at which one might gaze for a long time to recover, as it were, all that is surprising and alluring about a sunset in December. The sky has a particular divine effect, being harmoniously rendered and incontrovertibly one of the most handsome of the Exhibition. (Kraaij, p. 56)

In the 1860s Charles Leickert was asked to participate in the project for the Arti Society’s Historical Gallery. In order to enhance the status of history paintings in Holland, young artists were asked to portray the nation’s past “envisioning of Holland’s renown in the fields of history, science, art trade and craft.” (Kraaij, p. 53) In 1862, Charles Leickert painting sale was among the first group of the fifty-two paintings to be completed and inaugurated by the King on 29 March 1862. This Charles Leickert painting entitled Amsterdam, the Greatest Trading Centre of Holland portrayed a view of the medieval town with several figures dressed in the costume of the period (title was initially given by an exhibition reviewer; in 1895 this same Charles Leickert painting was exhibited under the title The Town Hall of Amsterdam in the Mid-Fifteenth Century).

Examples of this are a man with an ice-sledge and, in his cityscapes and summer scenes, a woman carrying a basket on her head.” (Kraaij, pg. 63) Unlike other contemporary artists, he did not introduce new elements in Charles Leickert painting that proclaimed the Industrial Revolution, but preferred to paint “picturesque cities and timeless, unspoilt landscapes,” which evoked “a mood of nostalgic Romanticism. “

It was that attraction to pure landscape that prompted Charles Leickert to travel to Germany in 1859 and visit the Rhine Valley, Rudesheim, at that time, Charles Leickert painting sale was considered old fashioned and critics pointed out to the “lack of passion and the refined technique of artists like Shlefhout and Leickert, which stood in sharp contrast to the rough and often deliberately unfinished work by The Hague School and the Amsterdam painters.” (Kraaij, pg. 80)

Works of Charles Leickert Paintings Sale