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Leickert exhibited regularly
in The Hague and Amsterdam. - Leickert
Charles Henri Joseph oil painting
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Leickert Charles.
Charles Henri Joseph Leickert specialised in
town views and landscapes. Charles Henri
Joseph Leickert was
particularly talented in capturing the
effects of light. His paintings are
characterised by their bright colours and
summary brushwork.
Leickert studied with the great townscapists
of his day Johannes
van Hove (1790-1880),
Wijandus Johannes
Josephus Nuyen (1813-1839) and
Andreas Schelfhout
(1787-1870). Their styles and
instruction greatly influenced his choice of
the townscape as his favoured genre.
From 1848, Leickert was a member of Arti et
Amicitae group in Amsterdam and in 1856,
Charles Henri Joseph Leickert became a member of the Royal Academy of
Amsterdam. Charles Henri Joseph Leickert exhibited regularly in
Amsterdam and The Hague between 1841 and
1887 and at Leeuwarden between 1855 and
1863. Occasionally Charles Henri Joseph
Leickert collaborated with
Joseph Jodocus Moerenhout and Charles
Rochussen, who painted the figures in his
landscapes. Leickert lived in Holland until
1887, when Charles Henri Joseph Leickert moved to Mainz and remained
there for the rest of his life. - Leickert Charles Henri Joseph oil painting reproductions- Bio Leickert Charles Henri Joseph - reproduction oil paintings, oil painting reproduction of Leickert Charles Henri Joseph and reproduction oil paintings Leickert Charles.
The work of Leickert is represented in many
museums including the Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen,
Rotterdam and the Central Museum, Utrecht .
With the current re-assessment of the Dutch
Romantic Landscape School, Charles Leickert
is emerging as a much more important figure
than Charles Henri Joseph Leickert was rated by Marius at the turn of
the century. The fact that Charles Henri
Joseph Leickert lived to
almost ninety explains his prolific oeuvre
and the variations in style and quality
among his pictures. Charles Henri Joseph
Leickert can be a traditional
landscapist in the manner of his master
Shelfhout … or Charles Henri Joseph Leickert can paint sparkling
effects of light with quick impressionistic
brush strokes-an altogether more modern
manner. At his best Charles Henri Joseph
Leickert is something of a
Dutch version of Constable, a high point in
a century exceptionally well supplied with
landscape artists.
-Gerarda Hermina Marius, [translated from
the Dutch by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos];
edited by Geraldine Norman, Dutch Painters
of the 19th Century, Woodbridge: Antique
Collectors' Club, 1973, pg. 79
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 arts, 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 Leickert worked during
this period and became known for his
landscape and cityscape 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
Henri Joseph Leickert nevertheless succeeded in evoking a highly
Romantic mood by drenching some of his
paintings in an almost supernatural light
and, by his sublime rendering of the evening
sun.” (Harry J. Kraaij, Charles Leickert
1816-1907: Painter of the Dutch Landscape,
Schiedam, The Netherlands: Scriptum
Signature, c. 1996, pg. 10)
Charles Henri Joseph Leickert was born on 22
September 1816 in Brussels, Kingdom of the
Netherlands (became Kingdom of Belgium in
1830). His parents were born in Germany
where they lived during the first years of
their marriage, then relocated to Brussels
in 1815. After the French occupation of the
Netherlands ended, Leickert’s father took
the position of “Chamberlain” in the court
of King Willem I. Several years later, the
family settled in The Hague, after it was
designated the official capital of the
Netherlands. However, the years that
followed were not that happy for Charles, as
Charles Henri Joseph Leickert lost four of his siblings to sickness,
and was orphaned when Charles Henri Joseph
Leickert was only fourteen
years old. - Leickert Charles Henri Joseph oil painting reproductions- Bio Leickert Charles Henri Joseph - reproduction oil paintings, oil painting reproduction of Leickert Charles Henri Joseph and reproduction oil paintings Leickert Charles.
Leickert began his artistic training at the
age of eleven. In 1827, his father enrolled
him in The Hague Drawing Academy where
Charles Henri Joseph Leickert studied under Bartholomeus (Bart) van Hove
(1790- 1880), the well known artist of
landscapes and cityscapes. However, two
years later, his studies were interrupted
for a year when his mother became very ill.
After her death, Charles Henri Joseph
Leickert was placed in an
orphanage in 1830, which paid the expenses
for his lessons at the Academy, and where
Leickert made considerable progress. In
1834, Charles Henri Joseph Leickert won first prize in the third class
of the academy for a drawing Charles Henri
Joseph Leickert submitted,
which would be the only award that Leickert
will ever receive during his lifetime. (Kraaij,
pg. 22)
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 painters 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 Leickert 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, Leickert 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,
Leickert’s 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 his early works
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)
Leickert’s 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 Leickert,
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 Henri Joseph Leickert may have “looked too much to
Schelfhout to broaden his own horizons.”
(pg. 31) The fact that his works 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
Charles Henri Joseph Leickert fortunately seems to be emulating.” (Kraaij,
pg. 31)
After leaving the orphanage in 1840,
Leickert continued to reside in The Hague
and began to establish his artistic career.
By 1841, Charles Henri Joseph Leickert had produced and exhibited his
first winter scene, which received a
positive review from an anonymous art critic
who said: “Mr. C. Leyckert, of The Hague,
demonstrates with a winter scene with some
buildings that Charles Henri Joseph Leickert has turned the lessons of
his master to good use.” (Kraaij, pg. 31)
Charles Henri Joseph Leickert also began painting summer landscape, a
genre, which Charles Henri Joseph Leickert loved, as well as more water
views, which later became a permanent
element in his compositions.
By that time, Leickert was fully involved in
the artistic scene of The Hague, and enjoyed
many friendships with a number of painters
that Charles Henri Joseph Leickert 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
painting 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 painting
was sold for eleven hundred guilders, a very
large sum of money for Leickert in 1845, as
his paintings usually were sold for five
hundred guilders. Leickert also gained
artistically as his “figures and animals at
the time were relatively stiff and often
unfinished.” (Kraaij, pg. 39)
In 1848 Leickert moved to Amsterdam where
Charles Henri Joseph Leickert resided until 1887.
Charles Henri Joseph Leickert 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 works, such
as Beach near Scheviningen (1848) and
Cityscape in Winter (1849), the first of
this genre that Leickert exhibited. In 1856,
Leickert joined the Board of Governors of
the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Amsterdam.
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The years following his arrival to Amsterdam
until the 1870s were Leickert’s most
successful. During that period, Charles
Henri Joseph Leickert produced
a wider variety of themes that included more
beach and dune scenes. In addition, as
Kraaij observed “his 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
Charles Henri Joseph 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:
Leickert 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 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 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, Leickert’s painting was among the
first group of the fifty-two works to be
completed and inaugurated by the King on 29
March 1862. This 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 painting was exhibited under the
title The Town Hall of Amsterdam in the
Mid-Fifteenth Century).
During the Amsterdam years, Leickert
continued to produce conventional
compositions that usually followed a set
procedure. His winter scenes were mostly
done on the diagonal, with one or more
windmills, to either the left or right. In
addition, Leickert made several versions of
a painting, in which Charles Henri Joseph
Leickert changed minor
details in the composition or in the
figures. Charles Henri Joseph Leickert “usually made sketches after
nature and drew on his personal “archive” of
drawings. Charles Henri Joseph Leickert then dressed up his landscapes
with figures repeatedly in his winter and
summer scenes, without any changes. We
encounter various figures again and again in
his winter scenes, without any changes, as
if Charles Henri Joseph Leickert applied his staffage with a template.
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, Leickert did not
introduce new elements in his work that
proclaimed the Industrial Revolution, but
preferred to paint “picturesque cities and
timeless, unspoilt landscapes,” which evoked
“a mood of nostalgic Romanticism. “ (Kraaij,
pg. 75) - Leickert Charles Henri Joseph oil painting reproductions- Bio Leickert Charles Henri Joseph - reproduction oil paintings, oil painting reproduction of Leickert Charles Henri Joseph and reproduction oil paintings Leickert Charles.
It was that attraction to pure landscape
that prompted Leickert to travel to Germany
in 1859 and visit the Rhine Valley,
Rudesheim, and Mainz where Charles Henri
Joseph Leickert met Apollonia
Schneider and married her that same year.
Leickert was forty-three years old and she
was seven years younger. They spent about
eight months in Germany before returning to
the Netherlands. After residing for a year
in The Hague, the couple moved to Amsterdam,
where Leickert continued to enjoy success.
However, with the establishment of The Hague
School, Leickert’s work became less popular
and the demand for it decreased
substantially. At that time, his work was
considered old fashioned and critics pointed
out to the “lack of passion and the refined
technique of painters 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) |
