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18 6 Meijer de Haan, Petrus Franciscus Greive, c.1872, oil on wood, 14.5 x 11.5 cm. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

7 Copy of an entry in the Conscription Register, 1872, no. 1, with a description of the appearance of conscript 181, Meijer de Haan, Stadsarchief Amster-dam (Municipal Archive, Amsterdam).

An entry in the register of the academy notes that Meijer J.

de Haan was accepted to follow four or more lessons per week.

Not long after beginning his studies, De Haan was taken ill

“so that he enjoyed few of the fruits of his studies” and had

to leave the academy in 1875.17

The disappointment of having to leave the academy had little

effect on Meijer de Haan’s artistic ambitions. In 1875, he

submitted De kleine huishoudster (The Little Housekeeper) to the

Exhibition of the Works of Living Masters held in The Hague. [8]

His asking price for the painting was 300 gulden.18 The work

remained unsold and appeared later that the same year in an

exhibition held by the art society Artibus Sacrum in Arnhem.19

In 1876, the painting was exhibited at the Exhibition of Art in

Rotterdam with an asking price of 175 gulden. The asking price

for Den Haan’s second submission to the Rotterdam exhibition,

De kleine kokette (The Little Coquette) was 225 gulden.20 [9]

Social Rise and a Studio of His OwnDuring the 1870’s, the De Haan family achieved upward mobility

of a sort reflective of economic and social changes in Jewish

Amsterdam at the time. In 1872, De Haan’s brother Samuel set

out on his own to establish a bakery at Valkenburgerstraat 186.21

The bakery was later to grow to become De Stoommeelfabriek

De Amstel en Broodfabriek De Haan (The Steam-Powered Flour

Mill De Amstel and Bread Bakery De Haan) located on the

Uilenburgergracht just behind Valkenburgerstraat 186 in

Amsterdam.22 [10 and 11] In 1877, two years after the death of

his mother, Meijer de Haan moved in with Samuel.23 Municipal

change-of-address documents list De Haan’s profession at the

time as kunstschilder (artist-painter). A year later De Haan set

up a studio of his own on the second floor of a newly renovated

residential building, Valkenburgerstraat 188, located adjacent

to the mill and bakery.24

Academic YearsOn Monday, November 2, 1874, two years after the death of

his teacher P. F. Greive, Meijer de Haan sat for entrance exams

at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in company of Nicolaas

Steffelaar and J.S.H. Kever, two of his fellow pupils at Greive’s

studio. The exam consisted of drawing “studies from life” in the

“nudes class.” 16 De Haan and his companions were sufficiently

skilled in anatomy and drawing to be admitted to the academy.

198 Meijer de Haan, De kleine huishoud­ster (The Little Housekeeper), c. 1875, oil on canvas, 42,5 x 31,5 cm. Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam.

36

In June, 1889, Meijer de Haan returned to Paris to attend the

Volpini exhibition. The exhibition was held in the Café des Arts

during the Paris Universal Exhibition as a platform for

alternative artists, such as Schuffenecker, Gauguin and Bernard,

whose works ran contrary to the artistic conventions of the time.

Filled with inspiration, De Haan returned to Brittany and, early

in August, headed to the village of Le Pouldu to begin his

collaboration with Gauguin. A few months later, he wrote to

his “dear friend, van Gogh” that he was on a new path. De Haan

described the influence of Gauguin in a positive light but his

letter also suggests that Gauguin was less than easy to work

35 Restaurant de la Poste et de la Plage, (Buvette de la Plage), Le Pouldu, Finistère, photograph, c. 1900. Former collection of Pierre Le Thoër, Mairie (Town Hall), Clohars Carnoët. © Yves de Ramecourt.

36 Meijer de Haan, Ferme sur la côte (Farmhouse near Le Pouldu), 1889-1890, oil on canvas, 90 x 73 cm. Private collection.

>

3737 Anonymous, Bretton Women Scutch­ing Flax (Labor), after the work of the same name by Meijer de Haan, c. 1890, watercolor on paper, 17 x 25,5 cm. Private collection, Paris.

by Gauguin’s financial problems, “if I had not come to his aid

these last three months [...] he would have had nothing to eat.”82

Late in January, 1890, Meijer de Haan sent a telegram from

Le Pouldu to Theo and Jo van Gogh to congratulate them on

the birth of their son. One week later, Theo wrote to his brother

Vincent that Gauguin was expected to arrive shortly in Paris to

try to arrange a way to ensure himself a livelihood. In the same

letter, Theo mentioned that Meijer de Haan was also in a delicate

financial situation. In words more than somewhat offensive by

today’s standards, Theo van Gogh explained, “His family has

absolutely no understanding as to why he has not remained in

their midst and because they are miserable Jews they think they

might be able to pressure him into returning by withholding

his allowance.” Theo also commented on De Haan’s progress,

describing a painting De Haan had sent him – Nature morte: pot

oignons, pain et pommes vertes (Still Life: Pot with Onions, Bread,

with. De Haan added in the same letter that he had been

working on studies every day for two months and that he

planned during the coming year to “restfully calmly paint […]

many drawings so as to understand everything well, to know

everything through and through before speaking.”80 [36]

On arrival in Le Pouldu, De Haan stayed at the Hôtel Destais.

Later, he moved to Buvette de la Plage, owned by innkeeper

Marie Henry.81 [35] In a letter to Theo van Gogh, De Haan wrote

of his homesickness for his room on the Rue Lepic but also

of a newly optimistic belief in his own abilities. De Haan and

Gauguin had just finished decorating the walls of Marie Henry’s

inn with their paintings and De Haan described to Van Gogh in

glowing terms his own mural, Labor (Labor), as well as the pieces

done by of Gauguin. [37] With pride, De Haan related that

Gauguin had “sent Vincent a sketch of the mural with an

explanation of its colors.” He also conveyed worries occasioned

40 41 Café Voltaire, place de l’Odéon. Paris (VIème arr.), 1909. Photograph of Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget (1857- 1927), Albumin print on paper. Paris, Musée Carnavalet. © Eugène Atget / Musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet.

4142 Anonymous, De ruïne van de brood­fabriek ‘de Haan’ na de brand (Ruins of the Bread Factory “De Haan” in the Aftermath of the Fire),1893, lithograph, 27,6 x 24.2. Stadsarchief Amsterdam (Municipal Archive, Amsterdam).

43 Anonymous, Flour mill “De Amstel” directly after the fire), 1893, photograph, Stadsarchief Amsterdam (Municipal Archive, Amsterdam).

44 Anonymous, Kruisstraat te Hattem, c. 1850, watercolor on paper, dimensions of the original unknown. Regional Archive Epe, Hattem, and Heerde,

introduced Verkade to Gauguin. Both this introduction and

De Haan’s introduction to other representatives of symbolism

were to prove crucial to Verkade’s artistic development. [40] The

Dutch artist Sara de Swart, a friend of Theo van Gogh’s widow

Jo Bonger, also sought out De Haan while in Paris. In March,

1891, she wrote to Jo that De Haan had changed his original plan

to move to Tahiti with Gauguin and now proposed to remain in

Paris.93 On March 23, 1891, a banquet was held for Paul Gauguin

at the Café Voltaire in honor of his impending departure. [41] It is

not known how long thereafter Meijer de Haan lingered in Paris.

The Final YearsOn February 18, 1893, Meijer de Haan was registered in the

municipal rolls of the village of Hattem on the IJssel river in

the Netherlands. His presence in Hattem spared him the site of

the fire that on February 23 destroyed much of his family’s mill

and bakery business in Amsterdam.94 [42 and 43] In Hattem,

De Haan lodged at the boarding house of the Klaver family, where

his cousin and pupil, Louis Hartz, was also living at the time.95

[44] During De Haan’s stay in France, Hartz had used the studio

on the Valkenburgerstraat but moved to Hattem in 1892 to join

a small colony of artists that had taken grown around the painter

Jan Voerman (1857-1941).96 In her memoirs, the granddaughter

of the proprietors of the boarding house recounted this

recollection of Meijer de Haan and the time he spent in Hattem:

But the lodger that she [proprietress E.L. Klaver-Barendsen]

cared for most, her darling, was the painter I. Meijer de Haan

[sic], a still single young man from a well-off Amsterdam-Jewish

family. He came to Hattem, not as a student of Voerman but as

a painter in his own right. […] Perhaps he came to Hattem in the

hope that his health would improve, a quiet life, in a healthy

region. Indeed, he was already ill and in fact he did not believe

that he had much longer to live. […] He did not avoid gallows

humor, not even relating to his own possibly not so far off death.

This Mister De Haan – that is what she always called him –

made an unforgettable impression on the family of my

grandparents. […] I do not believe that he still painted much

in those years. The only work of his that I ever saw was a small

floral piece done in oils, dark violets, impressionistically done.97

In the autumn of 1893, while still in Hattem, Meijer de Haan

renewed contact with Jo Bonger, the widow of Theo van Gogh,

64 62 Alexandre & Co, Het schildersatelier van Meijer de Haan (The atelier of Meijer de Haan), 1896, gelatine silver print. Collection of Koninklijk Oudheidkundig Genootschap (KOG), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

beautiful watercolors by Johannes Bosboom. It was regarded

as a model studio and was heavily visited by artists and art-

lovers.7

This style persisted into the twentieth century. The interior

portraits of the studios of well-known Dutch artists taken

in 1903 by photographer Sigmund Löw (1845-1910) provide

evidence of the fashions according to which leading painters

and sculptors still arranged their workplace as the new

century began. The studio of the painter John Hulk (1855-1913)

provides a case in point. [63] Like De Haan, Hulk surrounded

himself with seventeenth-century furniture.

As with De Haan’s, studios furnished in stereotypical “Old

Dutch” styles and containing antique furniture supplemented

with contemporary objects were typical amongst Dutch painters

of the time, the earliest among them being the workplace of

Huib van Hove (1814-1864). In 1902, the painter Theophile de

Bock, recalled the studio of Van Hove:

His studio, furnished in the style of a seventeenth-century

Dutch regent, with wood-paneled walls, wall-hangings, and

antique furniture tastefully upholstered, was located in the

Hofje van Niekoop, later the location of the painters’ society

Pulchri Studio, a location immortalized in a series of especially

6563 John Hulk in his studio at Amsteldijk 17, Amsterdam, photographed by Sigmund Löw, March 17, 1903, gelatine silver print. Collec-tion of the Rijks bureau voor Kunst historische Documentatie (RKD) (The Nether lands Institute for Art History), The Hague.

64 Hendrik Hollander, Rembrandt schildert de Nachtwacht (Rembrandt Painting the Night Watch), c. 1870, oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm. Present location unknown.

National IdentityThe fashionableness of real or imagined seventeenth-century

Dutch interiors can be traced to the last quarter of the

eighteenth century and the positing at that time of the

seventeenth century as a “Golden Age” of commercial and

cultural achievement in the Netherlands and thereby as

a suitable model around which to contrive a modern national

identity for the country.8 During the first half of the nineteenth

century this artifice manifested itself in the art world in two

ways. First, many works were painted in manners imitative

of seventeenth century styles, i.e. with attention to detail,

92

De Haan’s progress under Gauguin’s tutelage is characterized

by a gradual lightening of the colors of his palette. At first,

this is seen only in his mixing white with the foreground and

background colors, as in the summertime still-life Nature

morte: vase de lilas, boule de neige et citrons (Still Life: Vase

of Lilacs and Snowballs with Lemons) and the yellowish

cast to all the colors of Broc et betteraves (Jug with Beetroot).

[87 and 88]

Blanc’s article on color in Grammaire des arts du dessin.18 These

treatises on color theory could explain De Haan’s use of the

complementary colors of blue and orange in Nature morte: pichet

bleu et quatre poires, but the experiment is tentative; colors on

the fruit float over and under each other and do not model their

forms. There is also a slight suggestion of cloisoné outlines

which were used to flatten the shapes of the pears, thus

underscoring their two-dimensionality.

89 Meijer de Haan, Nature morte aux carottes (Still Life with Carrots), 1889-1890, oil on canvas, 32 x 40 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. © RMN (Musée d’Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski

93

Compositions dominated by strong diagonals became common

in De Haan’s still-lifes, including the impressive Nature morte

aux carottes (Still Life with Carrots). [89] Here, the potatoes and

beets (not carrots, as the title would suggest) seem to tumble

down the tilted table, as does the garlic in his Nature morte:

botte d’ail et pot d’étain (Still Life: Bunch of Garlic with Pewter

Pot). [90] Both paintings depict the same pewter pot. The

subtleties of the rich color variations in both are striking,

demonstrating De Haan’s mastery of Gauguin’s penchant for

Although De Haan had thought it would take him a year to

absorb Gauguin’s ideas, he actually did this more quickly.

By the fall of 1889, De Haan had begun to find his way. The fruit

in Nature morte: pommes et vase de fleurs (Still Life: Appels and

a Vase of Flowers) clearly demonstrates his newly acquired

mastery of modeling with color. [91] This is also seen is his

marked attempt to enliven the flat background with greens,

blues, purples, and pinks.19

90 Meijer de Haan, Nature morte: botte d’ail et pot d’étain (Still Life: Bunch of Garlic and Pewter Pot), 1889-1890, oil on canvas, 32 x 40 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes, France, deposited by Musée d’Orsay. © MBA, Rennes, Dist. RMN / Adelaïde Beaudoin

106

De Haan’s major achievement in Brittany was in re-orienting

his style away from the dark, anecdotal work of his Dutch period

towards the bold, brightly colored paintings he created on the

walls of Marie Henry’s inn in Le Pouldu. Might he have followed

Gauguin’s lead to explore symbolism in his future work? Or might

he have preferred instead to continue exploring the abstract

power of color and line that characterize his Brittany period,

thereby moving towards a more and more abstract style with

a focus on color and flat forms?52 Unfortunately, De Haan was

denied all these possibilities. His brothers’ threat to cut his

allowance forced him to leave Brittany first to Paris and then to

Amsterdam. He never again returned to Brittany. He may not even

have known that Marie Henry was pregnant with his child.53

Meijer de Haan left Le Pouldu in early October, 1890. Gauguin

left a month later. Both of them met again in Paris, staying at

the same hotel at 35, rue Delambre. Gauguin spent the winter

there planning his departure for Tonkin, Madagascar, or Tahiti.

His plans still called for De Haan to join him. Instead, Meijer

de Haan returned to The Netherlands, where he died of

complications of a life-long illness in Amsterdam on Oct 24,

1895 at the age of forty-three.

Meijer de Haan’s legacy is not to be found only in his paintings;

it is also seen in Gauguin’s haunting portrayals of his face. Rich

beautiful painting summarizes De Haan’s artistic advancements

in 1890: a luminous effect is created by the white under-painting

that shows through in many areas; the often complementary

colors are bright and nuanced. The composition suggests an

understanding of Japanese prints as well as of Gauguin’s

interest in flattening picture planes.

Meijer de Haan’s LegacyUnfortunately, there is almost no written evidence revealing how

Meijer de Haan viewed his own work and its development. There

is only a succinct and moving report in the form of a letter he

wrote to Theo van Gogh from le Pouldu on October 8, 1890, just

before leaving it forever. In it, De Haan described his youth in

Holland as “stifling” and “oppressive” and the art world he was

part of as “somber” and “narrow-minded.” After more than a

year in Brittany, however, he wrote that he was “overly happy”

with “liberal ideas” and prepared, after a year of sketches and

studies, to attempt a complete painting sometime soon.50 If only

Meijer de Haan would have had more time in Brittany to work

with Gauguin, and to independently submerge himself in the

local landscape with its mystery, unique colors, and light, he

may have been able to move away from the shadow of Gauguin

and to realize his own goal of making “complete canvases.”51

More time in Brittany also may have enabled him to fuse his

intellectual interests and his artistic talents.

104 Paul Gauguin, Paysage au Pouldu (Landscape at Le Pouldu), 1890, oil on canvas, 73,3 x 92,4 cm. Collection of Mr. And Mrs. Paul Mellon, Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

107105 Meijer de Haan, Paysage du Pouldu, au verger (The Valley of Kerzellec, Le Pouldu), 1889, oil on canvas, 58,5 x 71,7 cm. Private Collection, Portland, Oregon. Courtesy of Galerie Hopkins-Custot, Paris.