Alexander Hugo Bakker Korff artwork • painting • previously for sale The reconvalescent

Alexander Hugo Bakker Korff was born in The Hague in 1824 and from 1844 took classes at the academies in The Hague and Antwerp. Initially he paints Biblical and mythological scenes in a Romantic-Classicist style, but in 1859 he switched to a different genre. He specializes in small genre paintings with domestic scenes, painted with a comical undertone and thus breaks with academic conventions. Bakker Korff is internationally renowned with his genre paintings. Not only because of the technically precise style, but also because of the irony. The titles of the works are carefully chosen and contribute to the humorous undertone. The artist often paints old spinsters in bourgeois and elegant interiors. He regularly uses his two unmarried sisters (with whom he lives) as models. Bakker Korff applies a painting technique that is comparable to that of the Leiden fine painting school. He was famous for his material expression; he perfectly depicted clothes made of silk and velvet. The painter died in 1882. In the obituary of Bakker Korff in De Nederlandsche Spectator, literary scientist Carel Vosmaer writes: 'He never fell to lowly comedic style, never turned to caricature and sharp mockery. The banter always stays with him from good houses, and mild in heart. '