Henry Luyten or Jan Hendrik Luyten (21 May 1859 in

Roermond Roermond (; li, Remunj or ) is a city, municipality, and diocese in the Limburg province of the Netherlands. Roermond is a historically important town on the lower Roer on the east bank of the river Meuse. It received town rights in 1231. Ro ...

– 21 January 1945 in

Brasschaat Brasschaat () is a municipality located in Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium, and in the Flemish province of Antwerp. The municipality only comprises the town of Brasschaat proper. In November 2006, Brasschaat won the LivCom-Award 200 ...

) was a

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

-born

Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German *Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...

painter. He is known for his

genre scenes Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, work, and street scenes. Such representations (also called genre works, ...

, marines, landscapes, portraits and animal scenes.Jan Hendrik Luyten
at the

Netherlands Institute for Art History The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

Biography

Hendrik Luyten was born in Roermond,

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

as the son of Francis Hubert Luyten (1833–1908) and Johanna Hendrica de Bee (1829–1904). He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp,

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...

from 1878. In 1883 he attended classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris with Alexander Cabanet. After 10 months he returned to Antwerp. In 1884 Luyten became a member of the art circle ''Als ik kan'' ('If I can') and participated in a number of expositions. His main friends in the art circle were Henri van de Velde, Jan-Willem Rosier and Leon Brunin. From 1886 (Gold Medal from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam) he became friends with Dutch artists

Matthijs Maris Matthias Maris (17 August 1839 – 22 August 1917) was a Dutch painter, etcher and lithographer. He was also known as Matthijs Maris or Thijs. He initially belonged to the Hague School, like his two brothers, Jacob and Willem, but his later w ...

Jacob Maris Jacob Hendricus Maris (August 25, 1837 – August 7, 1899) was a Dutch painter, who with his brothers Willem and Matthijs belonged to what has come to be known as the Hague School of painters. He was considered to be the most important and influen ...

, Hendrik-Willem Mesdag, Alma Tadema and the Italian painter

Giovanni Segantini Giovanni Segantini (15 January 1858 – 28 September 1899) was an Italian painter known for his large pastoral landscapes of the Alps. He was one of the most famous artists in Europe in the late 19th century, and his paintings were collected by ...

In the period from 1886 to 1887 Luyten resided in the Borinage, a coalmining area in the south of Belgium where the working and living conditions of the miners were appalling. Here he witnessed the great strike and its bloody suppression. In response, he painted the triptych "The Strike" on which he worked until 1893. The painting (international title: "Struggle for Life") measures . The painting on the right-hand panel () is called "After the uprising" and the left-hand panel is called "Misery". On 17 April 1890 Luyten married Joanna Francisca Brees (1854–1916). A son named Henry Francis was born on 28 November 1892 from this marriage. The family settled for some time in

Merksem Merksem (; former spelling: ''Merxem'') is a district of the municipality and city of Antwerp in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It has 44,808 inhabitants as of 2021. History The history of Merksem goes back to Gallo-Roman times. During that peri ...

. In 1896 Luyten became a naturalized Belgian. He then established himself as an artist in

, near Antwerp. In his house, an old farmhouse surrounded by a large garden, he opened a private school of painting around 1900, the Institut des Beaux Arts Henry Luyten. Here he taught pupils from across Europe and the United States and let them paint from nature. His international students included Mara Corradini (Italy), Flora Zenker (Germany), Mary Poulle (USA), Pierre Blanc (Luxembourg), Maria Jansen (Netherlands), Mathilde Bernard (Belgium), Charles Myr Lesaar (Belgium), and Hedwich Behnisch (Breslau). Hedwich Behnisch would become his second wife in 1917 after the death of his first wife Joanna. Behnisch was born in 1873 in Luszkowa (Hohenangern) in the former German province of Posen. Her family owned large estates and castles in Silesia, but lost everything after World War II. Luyten was blamed after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

for his support for the Dutchification of

Ghent University Ghent University ( nl, Universiteit Gent, abbreviated as UGent) is a public research university located in Ghent, Belgium. Established before the state of Belgium itself, the university was founded by the Dutch King William I in 1817, when th ...

by the occupying Germans and his acceptance of a position at the Antwerp Academy during the war. He was boycotted by the establishment, had to give up his post at the Academy and had difficulty finding buyers for his work. Embittered, he and his wife left Belgium for a number of years and the couple settled in northern Germany in Wieck am Darss on the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and ...

. In 1923 he returned to Brasschaat as a convinced

flamingant The term ''flamingant'', in both Dutch and French, refers to an adherent of the Flemish Movement. Originating as a pejorative term use by Belgian nationalists, it may be equally used as an adjective or substantive and the term ''flamingantisme'' ...

. At the end of 1923 Luyten stayed several weeks in Rueslikon on

Lake Zurich __NOTOC__ Lake Zurich (Swiss German/ Alemannic: ''Zürisee''; German: ''Zürichsee''; rm, Lai da Turitg) is a lake in Switzerland, extending southeast of the city of Zürich. Depending on the context, Lake Zurich or ''Zürichsee'' can be used to ...

in Switzerland. From that period date studies of the snowy Alps and artistic portraits of friends and family. He had shows in London in 1926 and in Manchester in 1928. Greatly disappointed with the Belgian boycott, Hendrik Luyten offered to donate his work to his birth city Roermond in 1930. Cuypers' son Jos offered a wing of the former home of his father to build a museum. This led to the foundation of the "Municipal Museum Hendrik Luyten-Dr. Cuypers' inaugurated by the then

Princess Juliana Juliana (; Juliana Louise Emma Marie Wilhelmina; 30 April 1909 – 20 March 2004) was Queen of the Netherlands from 1948 until her abdication in 1980. Juliana was the only child of Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. ...

in 1932. Luyten was also appointed an Officer of the Order of Orange Nassau. On 19 January 1933, his daughter Lieselotte was born. A year later his son Henry died. Luyten had to pay for his perceived stance during the World War I twenty years later. At the start of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the octogenarian was jailed for one night. During the post-war repression following the liberation of parts of Belgium he was lifted from his sickbed in January 1945 and again jailed for one night. He died a few days later.

Works

As a painter, Luyten was very versatile. Best known as an impressionist landscape painter, he also excelled in portraits and genre scenes. He was influenced by the 19th century

Hague School The Hague School is a group of artists who lived and worked in The Hague between 1860 and 1890. Their work was heavily influenced by the realist painters of the French Barbizon school. The painters of the Hague school generally made use of relati ...

and

Barbizon school The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name ...

as well 17th century

and

Flemish painting Flemish painting flourished from the early 15th century until the 17th century, gradually becoming distinct from the painting of the rest of the Low Countries, especially the modern Netherlands. In the early period, up to about 1520, the painting ...

. One of his most famous works is ''The Golden Canvass of Flanders'' ('Het Gulden Doek van Vlaanderen') in which Luyten depicts a fictional meeting of the one hundred odd people who in his opinion played a key role in Flemish history and the

Flemish movement The Flemish Movement ( nl, Vlaamse Beweging) is an umbrella term which encompasses various political groups in the Belgium, Belgian region of Flanders and, less commonly, in French Flanders. Ideologically, it encompasses groups which have sought ...

. Catholic or liberal, activist or anti-German, alive or already deceased, he portrayed all against the backdrop of Rubens' ''

Descent from the Cross The Descent from the Cross ( el, Ἀποκαθήλωσις, ''Apokathelosis''), or Deposition of Christ, is the scene, as depicted in art, from the Gospels' accounts of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus taking Christ down from the cross after hi ...

''. He worked on the painting for more than 10 years. It was donated to the

IJzertoren The Yser Towers ( nl, IJzertoren) are a monument complex near the Yser river at Diksmuide, West Flanders in Belgium. The first tower was built in 1928–30 to commemorate the Belgian soldiers killed on the surrounding Yser Front during World War ...

(Yser Tower) where it is kept in the museum.''Oorlogssmet kleeft aan opgeknapt doek''
article on the checkered history of the painting The Golden Canvass of Flanders

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Luyten, Henry 1859 births 1945 deaths People from Roermond Belgian Impressionist painters Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Antwerp) alumni Academic staff of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Antwerp)

Biography

Works

References

Further reading

External links