Piet van der Hem (1885 - 1961) - De veiling

Piet van der Hem was born on September 9, 1885 in the Frisian village of Wirdum. He and his brother lost both parents at a young age, after which they were raised by their uncle and aunt in Leeuwarden. Van der Hem completed the H.B.S there in 1903, where he excelled in drawing. His drawing teacher Hans Bubberman urged him to obtain a secondary diploma in drawing at the Kunstnijverheidsschool in Amsterdam. In September 1903 Van der Hem settled in the capital to realize his ambition to become an artist. He found the studies very scholastic, but he completed them nonetheless. In October 1904 he took the entrance examination for the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, where he attended the day program from 1905 to 1907.

During these study years Van der Hem met several good friends, including the artists François Hoogerwaard and Bon Ingen-Housz. Together with them Van der Hem moved to Paris in 1907, where he took a modest studio in the artists’ district of Montmartre.3 ‘His interest lay mainly in drawing and painting the people in the modern street and nightlife: circus performers, clowns, dancers and dandified women and men from the libertine nightlife.4 He thus joined the themes in the works of older artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and the Dutch artists Kees van Dongen and Jan Sluijters, who had already been working in Paris.

After a year and a half he returned to Amsterdam, where he further elaborated his Paris studies. In 1909 he made his debut at the exhibition of the artists’ association Sint Lucas.6 The innovative work of the Amsterdam luminists Sluijters, Leo Gestel and Piet Mondriaan with bright colors in loose brushstrokes could also be seen here.7 This was an inspiring environment, and from that year Van der Hem also painted for a time in a moderately luminist painting style. An illustrative example is the painting Moulin Rouge, which is composed of many small strokes, bright color accents and spherical light effects [fig. b]. In Amsterdam Van der Hem not only paid attention to elegant scenes from the fashionable and demi-monde world but also to the people in the working-class neighborhoods. As in Paris, his interest lay in depicting people in lively and anecdotal scenes. Hartjesdag in the Jordaan is a good example of this [fig. c]. Even during the many trips he made between 1910-1914 to Rome, Paris, Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Madrid, he captured the local people in a characteristic manner.

In 1918 Van der Hem moved to a large house on Johan van Oldenbarneveltlaan in Scheveningen. From that moment on he mainly devoted himself to painting naturalistic portraits commissioned by wealthy Americans and Dutch people. He thus gained fame as a society portraitist with the group portrait Het kabinet Cort van der Linden 1913-1918 (1922) and the official portrait of the royal family (1925/1926).

In addition to his painting, Van der Hem until 1945 did a lot of book illustrations, posters, advertisement placards and political caricatures on commission. The political cartoons he made for De Nieuwe Amsterdammer (1914-1918), De Haagsche Post (1920-1935) and De Haagsche Courant (1941) are especially well known.14 [Fig. d] Van der Hem died in 1961 at the age of 75. His work is housed, among others, in the collections of the Drents Museum, Singer Laren, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Rijksmuseum.