Herman Moerkerk - Portret van een dame - Sold

Herman Moorkerk. Portrait of a lady. Large gouache on paper. Signed and dated 1924. With handwritten title: Herinnering aan Freuleken, November 19, 1924.

Hermanus Antonius Josephus Maria (Herman) Moerkerk (Den Bosch, March 2, 1879 – Haarlem, August 23, 1949) was a Dutch painter, illustrator, draftsman and book binding designer. Moerkerk attended grammar school in Sittard and later made a name for himself as a writer, director and designer of posters. He did not follow an art education, but was a student of the calligrapher Theodorus van Kempen (1896), of the painter Piet Slager Sr., and from 1899 he took lessons with the painter Jan Bogaerts. Moerkerk developed as an independent artist: around 1910 he was already quite well known as a draftsman, especially for his caricatures of Brabant folk types. He also provided criticism in the Brabant newspapers and was active as an organizer of the carnival. He also wrote a number of fairy tales and children's books.

Because he felt misunderstood as a painter, he showed some forty expressionist oil paintings in Tilburg in August 1927 under the pseudonym Alexei Wladkine, which deviated from his other work. At this exhibition, Moerkerk mingled with the public and made critical remarks to them about the works he had made himself.

In 1928 he left with his family for Haarlem, where he was employed by De Spaarnestad. He worked there until 1940 as an employee of the Catholic Illustration; he also designed book bindings and book covers. Moerkerk also worked as a draftsman for the Catholic daily newspaper De Tijd and directed the theater for the Haarlemse Rheterijkerskamer Alberdingk Thijm, founded in 1890. The painter Jacques Pijnenborg was one of his pupils.