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Geo Poggenbeek belongs to the late bloom of the Hague School. He painted and watercoloured in a dreamy tone reminiscent of Willem Maris and Anton Mauve. In his time, Poggenbeek was very successful with his atmospheric depictions of the Dutch landscape - often intimate places with cows or ducks on the side of the ditch, under the shelter of a bush. Poggenbeek was also known as a good etcher. He was a teacher of J.F.C. Scherrewitz.
Poggenbeek started with an office job, although drawing and painting were in his blood. Under the influence of his friend and painter Theo Hanrath, he opted for an uncertain artist's existence at the age of nineteen. Together they were apprenticed to the Amsterdam painter J. H. Veldhuijzen and then Poggenbeek followed courses at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. There he met Nicolaas Bastert and, together with him and Hanrath, he regularly visited the picturesque Oosterbeek, which at the time was very popular with Hague School painters who wanted to become proficient in painting en plein air.
At the beginning of the 1870s he traveled through Switzerland, Italy and France with his painter friend Bastert. Normandy and Brittany in particular held a great attraction for them. Bastert would later describe this period in which the two painters influenced and stimulated each other as 'a great enjoyment'. Between 1878 and 1882, Poggenbeek and Bastert lived and worked together in Amsterdam in Poggenbeek's studio near the Oosterpark. In 1881 the friends bought a house together in Breukelen, where they lived and worked for a few months a year. Only then did Poggenbeek take up painting seriously. The river Vecht inspired him, but he also captured the nearby Dutch peat bog landscape with ducks along the ditches and cattle on the river banks.
Poggenbeek is counted among the late flowering of the Hague School. His work is often compared to that of Willem Maris because both often chose ducks and calves under willows as subjects. In 1886, when Poggenbeek stayed with Mauve in Laren for three months, they had gotten to know and appreciate each other well during walks in nature. In their work they shared a blond and moody basic tone, enhanced with a bright green colour. However, the cityscapes that Poggenbeek painted in Amsterdam were very reminiscent of George Breitner's style.
Poggenbeek was an extremely modest, friendly and engaging person. He won medals at exhibitions in Paris (1894), Chicago (1895) and Berlin (1895). He died in 1903 at the age of 49. His work can be found in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, but also in numerous collections of institutions.
