Jan Fekkes - Prachtige in 1910 gemaakte Litho "de heide bij Laren met herder en schapen" - Sold

• Article: lithograph (black/white)
• Total size: 30 x 40 cm (HxW)
• Image size: 20 x 31 cm (HxW)
• Image: the heath near Laren with a shepherd and his sheep
• Signed in pencil 'J,H.Fekkes' (bottom right)
• Numbered in pencil 'No 3 (lower left)

Johannes Hendrikus (Joop, Jan or Jo) Fekkes (Amsterdam, 18-06-1885 - Blaricum, 23-05-1933) was a Dutch visual artist, active as an etcher, lithographer, painter and draftsman. (source RKD)
He received his first drawing lessons from BW Wierink at the evening drawing school (Industrieschool). From the fifth grade of primary school he was friends with Jaap Weijand (1886-1960). Together they were students of the National Academy of Visual Arts from 1906 to 1908. At the time, this was led by August Allebé, who 'provided him a firm basis for his technique' and AJ Derkinderen, who 'mainly fertilized his mind', according to an anonymous reviewer in the Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant of 9 July 1933. Fekkes initially lived and worked in Amsterdam, then in Bergen NH, where Weijand also lived, then again in Amsterdam and from 1915 in Laren, where he had his studio in the front house of the farm of the yard thrower Willem Zoon, dating from 1673 at Krommepad no. 4. Later Fekkes lived at Zevenenderdrift nr 160 (renumbered nr 46). On January 21, 1921, Fekkes was present at the founding meeting of the Association of Visual Artists Laren-Blaricum. He has participated in only a few exhibitions of the Vereeniging in Hotel Hamdorff. The painting of an autumn landscape Noolsche weg (1920) was exhibited there for the first time.

Besides painting portraits, dune and heath landscapes, still lifes and a beach scene (1910), he was also an excellent lithographer. He sometimes worked for months and months on one lithograph, which according to the painter and art critic Kees Heinsius was caused 'by the finely dissected details and the many professional difficulties in using the lithographic stone.' He was very musical, in conversations with friends about music he could become enraptured by Beethoven and make all the nuances and variations of his music audible while whistling and humming. An impressive lithograph of Beethoven's head exhibited in Hotel Hamdorff was much appreciated and even led to a mock poem with a drawing by Gijs van Schaik in the Laarder Courant de Bel.
In 1918, JJ de Gelder, director of the Leids Prentenkabinet (LPK), bought seven lithographs for the LPK and a lithograph of a hilly dune landscape for himself. This lithograph was later donated to the LPK by his daughter. A beautiful self-portrait from 1905, considered by the art critic Henri van Calker to be the most important work of his first period, is owned by the Singer Museum. A self-portrait from his second period around 1918 – which is in the collection of the Town Hall in Laren – shows some Cubist influence. This collection also includes a flower still life by Fekkes, purchased as support for the painter. His third period was characterized by an increasing stillness and concentration on the essence of nature.
His poor health prevented him from traveling abroad, which he also did not see the point. According to the art critic Kasper Niehaus, he was 'not so much in favor of eternal Italy painting; fir and birch trees suited him better than pine and poplar [ … ] he did not long for the big, distant and romantic and found his native soil, despised by some, richer than all foreign regions. He was one of the few who keep it quiet around him, and his work is also quiet.[ … ]. It is work that betrays balance and harmony won through struggle and struggle, but not what preceded it. [ … ] he mostly painted landscape, actually the melancholy landscape of his psyche.' This psychological condition also explains why most of his landscapes are not filled with people.