Jan Voerman sr. artwork • watercolour • drawing • previously for sale Ploughing the fields, Hattem in the distance

Jan Voerman was a farmer's son, and friends at a young age with the painter Willem Tholen. Together they received their first painting lessons and visited the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. Then Voerman painted landscapes, genre paintings, flower still lifes and cityscapes. His work changed when he came to live in 1896 on the Geldersedijk in Hattem, from where he had a wonderful view of the floodplains of the IJssel, where hundreds of cows grazed. From that time on, he mainly painted IJssel views, in refined, pale colors under high cloudy skies. Voerman painted a lot of watercolors and tried to transfer the transparency of this technique to oil paint.