Sluit menu
Sluit menu
Jan 'Zoetelief' Tromp was best known for his performances with children. These scenes are always idyllic and radiate the family happiness that he probably also knew. Because the painter was deaf and somewhat withdrawn, he preferred to use his own wife and children as models. He painted most in Blaricum and Katwijk. From 1899 onwards he found inspiration in farm life in Blaricum. Recurring themes are children playing in the garden or walking along the corn or tulip field, harvesting potatoes and feeding the bunnies. He 'discovered' Katwijk in 1905. At first he only spent the summers there with his family, but from 1914 he lived there permanently. Tromp paints the daily life of the fishermen and his children playing on the beach. He worked in the style of the Hague School, but with his own use of colour and light in his paintings.
Jan Zoetelief Tromp was born as Jan Tromp in Batavia (Dutch East Indies), where his father is an administrative official. Grandmother Zoetelief on his mother's side ('Grootje Zoet') discovered that he was deaf and dumb and took him to the Netherlands for a few years at the age of three for a tour of specialists. Jan then goes to a deaf-mute institution in Rotterdam, where he learns to read lips and use sign language. As a thank you to his grandmother, Jan later added Zoetelief to his name.
After the entire family returned to the Netherlands from Batavia in 1886, Tromp trained at the Hague Academy of Visual Arts and then the Academy of Visual Arts in Amsterdam. After graduating, he sought connections with painters of the Hague School and married Maria Blommers, a daughter of Bernard Blommers. Although he studied at the academies of The Hague and Amsterdam and was a member of Pulchri Studio and Arti et Amicitiae, his role within social artists' circles was relatively modest. He did exhibit, including at the Exhibitions of Living Masters, but not much. The fact that he was deaf probably bothered him and he also preferred the privacy and intimacy of his own family in his work.
Zoetelief Tromp was very popular with the buying public. People loved the happy, cheerful appearance of his paintings, his smooth brush and light use of colour. He initially derived many of his themes from those of his father-in-law Bernardus Blommers. But gradually his paintings became lighter in tone and more expressive. Tromp also had great success abroad, especially in England, the United States and Canada. In the Netherlands, appreciation for his work has increased again in recent decades.
