Petrus van der Velden
| Petrus van der Velden | |
|---|---|
Petrus van der Velden, photo taken 9 July 1896 by Francis Lawrence Jones.
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| Born |
5 May 1837 Rotterdam, The Netherlands |
| Died | 11 November 1913 (aged 76) Auckland, New Zealand |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Known for | Painter |
Petrus van der Velden (5 May 1837 – 11 November 1913), who is also known as Paulus van der Velden was a Dutch artist who spent much of his later career in New Zealand.
Petrus van der Velden was born in Rotterdam; his parents were Jacoba van Essel and Joannes van der Velden, a warehouse manager. Petrus began drawing lessons at around the age of 13 and subsequently apprenticed as a lithographer. In 1858 he founded a lithographic printing company in Rotterdam with business partner J. G. Zijderman.
The earliest known paintings by van der Velden date to around 1864; in 1867 he wound up the printing business and began painting and exhibiting full time. He studied at the academies in Rotterdam and Berlin. He registered at the Academy of Art, Rotterdam in 1868. After a stay on the island of Marken (1871–73) he lived in or near The Hague until 1888 and was part of the Hague School in artistic and stylistic origins. During this period he painted mainly genre scenes such as The Dutch Funeral (1872, collection of the Christchurch Art Gallery) and the Old Cellist (1887, The Hague, Gemeentemus.); he also produced some landscapes, for example Snow on the Sand Dunes (1889–90, collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa). His work of this period displays a tension between Naturalism and Romantic Realism in the style of Jozef Israëls.
In 1890 van der Velden emigrated to New Zealand with his wife and children (one daughter and two sons), aged 53. He arrived in Christchurch, where he stayed until 1898.
It was during the 1890s that van der Velden discovered Otira Gorge on the West Coast, which provided him with his most successful and enduring subject. The first trip took place in January-February 1891 and the primary work produced was Waterfall in the Otira (aka Mountain Stream) (1891). Van der Velden treated the Otira landscape as an opportunity to evoke the sublime, and sought out appropriate opportunities to depict it; as a student of his later recalled:
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