Frederik Hendrik Kaemmererartist • painter • watercolourist • draughtsmanDen Haag 1839-1902 Parijs

Frederik Hendrik Kaemmerer was born in The Hague in 1839. Here he completed secondary school and after that the Royal Academy of Arts. At the Academy he is taught by S.L. Verveer, the famous 19th century city and beach scene painter. Kaemmerer's early work mainly consists of landscapes, for which he regularly finds inspiration in the surroundings of Oosterbeek in Gelderland. But like so many young painters at that time, he was also attracted by the artistic innovations in the French capital and left for Paris in 1885. He signed a contract with Goupil and took lessons with Jean-Léon Gérôme, the French painter and sculptor who adhered to the tradition of Romanticism and French neoclassicism. In a short time, the Dutch landscapes make way for frivolous genre pieces in a French 18th-century setting. These paintings of elegant ladies in silk dresses with bows and ribbons, surrounded by courteous men with cross stitches on their heads, are very popular with the French public.

Kaemmerer will live in Paris most of his life. He became increasingly successful and when he won a gold medal at the Salon de Paris in 1874, he opened his own studio there. But the Netherlands continues to attract him and he regularly travels back and forth to The Hague. He often stays at Hotel Zeerust on the Scheveningen beach. There he paints what he sees from his hotel room window on the boulevard and beach. Under the influence of his friend who often accompanies him, the Hague Scholer D.A.C. Artz, his his style also changes. His touch becomes more and more free and his elegant figures are painted more and more impressionistically through the play of wind and light, the Dutch clouds and the loose beach sand.

Kaemmerer was a prolific painter, sold well and his exhibitions were successful. In addition to his genre paintings, he also made a name for himself as a portrait painter, especially in Paris. But more and more orders are also coming from the United States, where his style is very appealing. He made his final breakthrough in the Netherlands when he won a medal at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1889 and was included in the Legion of Honor in the same year. In addition to his work as a painter, Kaemmerer was also an illustrator for Elsevier's Geïllustreerd Maandschrift from 1891 to 1898 and was on the editorial staff from the magazine's founding.