Cornelis Kuijpersartist • painter • watercolourist • draughtsmanGorinchem 1864-1932 Soest

Cornelis Kuijpers is considered part of the after-flowering of the Hague School. His depiction of the landscape is strongly reminiscent of Willem Maris. Encouraged by his teachers at the Quellinus School in Amsterdam, Kuijpers took his easel into nature. First in Rijswijk and later in the wooded Renkum (1898-1910) he painted steamy meadows with ditches, flowering orchards and floating barges along the waterfront in a silver-gray and emerald-green palette. Together with Théophile de Bock and Charles Dankmeijer, among others, he exhibited his work at exhibitions of the Renkum artists' association Pictura Veluvensis.

The young Kuijpers was born with painting, his father Jan painted landscapes and genre paintings in romantic style. After his education at the Quellinus School in Amsterdam, he received further lessons in painting landscapes in his father's studio. After his marriage, Kuijpers settled in Rijswijk, where two sons were born. Although the area around The Hague no longer had the appeal for painters that it had a few decades earlier, Kuijpers still found plenty of inspiration for his landscapes.

In 1896 the family left for Renkum, where Théophile de Bock, one of the Hague School painters, still lived. His influence is clearly visible in Kuijpers' forest scenes for which he found his inspiration outdoors in nature; his studio was nature itself. Kuijpers distinguished himself from the Hague school of painters with his late impressionist style and his very own use of fresh green and gray. The emphasis is always on the landscape itself and furnishings with animals and figures are secondary. His work is largely sold through the Amsterdam art dealer Buffa, all the way to Spain, where he also wins various prizes.

After moving back to The Hague for the education of his two sons, Kuijpers often longed to return to the Veluwezoom, where he apparently felt more at ease among the woods than on the coast. Only after the family moved again, this time to Soest, did the influence of the Hague Scholers become more visible and large cloud formations and light effects appeared in his work. Kuijpers was known as a conscientious painter who delivered his paintings perfectly. Paint and linen had to meet the highest standards. In club life - he was active within Pictura Veluvensis in Renkum - he was a valued colleague. He taught his two sons, just as his father did to him, the love of painting. Kuijpers himself actively painted until his death in 1932.