Henri van de Velde artwork • painting • for sale A tempting offer; verso: Man with a cross

Henri van de Velde was born in Amsterdam in 1896, where he received lessons from H.M. Krabbé. Important for his development was a stay in Florence (1920-1925), where he became acquainted with early Italian painting. Back in the Netherlands, in response to the highly personal style of impressionism and expressionism, he opted for an objectively detailed representation of nature, in the tradition of Jan van Eyk and Jeroen Bosch. Initially, Van de Velde painted compositions with animals, later almost exclusively Biblical and mythological representations.