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Charles Henri Joseph Leickert specialised in
town views and landscapes. He was
particularly talented in capturing the
effects of light. Charles Leickert art are characterized by their bright colors and
summary brushwork.
Works of Charles Leickert is represented in many
museums including the Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen,
Rotterdam and the Central Museum, Utrecht .
Landscapes and cityscapes were a very
popular art form in the Netherlands during
the nineteenth century. After the end of the
French occupation in 1815, a new sense of
pride emerged in all things Dutch. In the
fine art, many artists rejected the more
classical French landscape, aiming instead
for Dutch landscape with rivers and
windmills and looked back to the ‘Golden
Age’ of the seventeenth century for
inspiration. Charles Henri Joseph Leickert worked during
this period and became known for
landscape and cityscape Charles Leickert paintings. “He
painted the cluttered banks of the Amstel River, a picturesque embankment near a
ferry to the city of Dordrecht, and ice scenes with Dutch windmills and skaters.
Charles Leickert artist nevertheless succeeded in evoking a highly
Romantic mood by drenching some of Charles Leickert
painting sale in an almost supernatural light and, by his sublime rendering of
the evening sun.”
Around the mid 1830s, Leickert joined the
studio of Wijnand Nuyen (1813-1839), the
painter who specialized in landscape,
townscape, and marine paintings. As one of
the few Dutch artists of the nineteenth
century to have been influenced by the
French Romantic Movement, Nuyen became
influential even though Charles Henri Joseph
Leickert died at the young
age of twenty-seven. While the painter studied
with him for a short period, Nuyen’s
tutelage is evident in his choice of
picturesque townscapes with lively details
such as laundry and pigeons (Villagers And
Horse at a Tollgate, c. 1840). In 1839, the
same year that Nuyen died, Charles Leickert painter made his
debut at the General Exhibition of Dutch
Living Masters in The Hague with a painting
entitled The Crossing of a Ferry, which was
purchased by the Society for the Promotion
of Visual Art. During this period,
his subjects consisted mostly of
simple combinations of architecture, some
figures, and nature, and “his washed out
colors and lighting recall Bart van Hove.” (Kraaij,
pg. 26) However, one of early Charles Leickert paintings
depicting a beach scene with “the
tranquility of late moment and of the
figures who look out on the sea beneath the
pink and yellow sky,” reflected the Romantic
style of the first half of the nineteenth
century. (Kraaij, pg. 28)
his next and most influential teacher
was Andreas Schelfhout (1787-1870), the
renowned landscape artist best known for his
winter scenes. Shelfhout was considered “the Dutch Claude Lorain (French,
1602-1682),” and was a popular teacher who attracted an impressive list of
students. Beside Charles Leickert Dutch artist,
Johannes Hoppenbrouwers (1819-1866),
Nicolaas Roosenboom (1805-1880) and Johan
Barthold Jongkind (1819-1891) attended
Shelfhout’s studio. It was under Shelfhout
that Leickert diligently learned to paint
winter scenes, and rapidly absorbed his
master’s working methods. However, as noted
by Kraaij, Charles Leickert may have “looked too much to Schelfhout to broaden his own horizons.”
(pg. 31) The fact that Charles Leickert paintings followed
closely those of Shelfhout was also noticed
by art critics at the time, as one observed
“A River view by Mr. Leickert, in The Hague,
is well drawn and painted, soft and charming
in tone, in the manner of Shelfhout, whom he fortunately seems to be emulating.” (Kraaij,
pg. 31)
By that time, Leickert was fully involved in the artistic scene of The Hague,
and enjoyed many friendships with a number of artists that Charles Leickert
Dutch artist met during his years at the Academy
and the studios of his teachers. Among them
were Salomon (“Sam”) Verveer (1813-1876),
Antonie Waldrop (1803-1866), and Charles
Rochussen (1814-1894). His friendship with
the latter led to a collaboration in a
Charles Leickert painting sale entitled Dutch Winter Scene (1845),
which proved beneficial to Leickert in more
ways than one. Rochussen was a more
established artist therefore the value of
this work was greatly enhanced. The Charles Leickert painting
sale was sold for eleven hundred guilders, a very
large sum of money for him in 1845, as
Charles Leickert art usually were sold for five
hundred guilders. He also gained artistically as his “figures and animals at the
time were relatively stiff and often unfinished.”
In 1848 Charles Leickert painter moved to Amsterdam where he resided until 1887.
He wanted to establish
himself as an independent painter and knew
that Amsterdam offered more opportunities
for artists to exhibit and sell their work.
Charles Henri Joseph Leickert became a member of the artist’s society
Arti et Amicitiae, and soon got involved in
the artistic life there, after reuniting
with a number of his artist friends. One of
them was Rochussen, who lived in the same
house as Leickert for some time. Once more,
they collaborated on a number of Charles Leickert paintings, such
as Beach near Scheviningen (1848) and
Cityscape in Winter (1849), the first of
this genre that he exhibited. In 1856,
the artist joined the Board of Governors of the Royal Academy of Fine Art in
Amsterdam.
The years following his arrival to Amsterdam
until the 1870s were his most successful. During that period, Charles Leickert
Dutch artist produced
a wider variety of themes that included more
beach and dune scenes. In addition, as
Kraaij observed “Charles Leickert paintings are carefully finished; elements
such as vegetation and background are executed in particular detail. The color
contrasts are often surprising and the rendering of chiaroscuro is magnificent.”
(pg. 54) Among the Works of Charles Leickert produced during that period were View or Het
IJ with Amsterdam in the Background (1849)
and View of Amsterdam in the Winter with
Setting Sun, which was well received in the
press. An art critic observed:
Charles Leickert painter has long managed to situate himself
outside the school of Shelfhout-that is, to
learn, to observe with his own eyes. His
View of Amsterdam in the Winter with Setting
Sun is one of those Charles Leickert paintings at which one
might gaze for a long time to recover, as it
were, all that is surprising and alluring
about a sunset in December. The sky has a
particular divine effect, being harmoniously
rendered and incontrovertibly one of the
most handsome of the Exhibition. (Kraaij, p.
56)
In the 1860s Charles Leickert was asked to
participate in the project for the Arti
Society’s Historical Gallery. In order to
enhance the status of history paintings in
Holland, young artists were asked to portray
the nation’s past “envisioning of Holland’s
renown in the fields of history, science,
art trade and craft.” (Kraaij, p. 53) In
1862, Charles Leickert painting sale was among the
first group of the fifty-two paintings to be
completed and inaugurated by the King on 29
March 1862. This Charles Leickert painting entitled
Amsterdam, the Greatest Trading Centre of
Holland portrayed a view of the medieval
town with several figures dressed in the
costume of the period (title was initially
given by an exhibition reviewer; in 1895
this same Charles Leickert painting was exhibited under the
title The Town Hall of Amsterdam in the
Mid-Fifteenth Century).
Examples of this are a man with an
ice-sledge and, in his cityscapes and summer
scenes, a woman carrying a basket on her
head.” (Kraaij, pg. 63) Unlike other
contemporary artists, he did not
introduce new elements in Charles Leickert painting that
proclaimed the Industrial Revolution, but
preferred to paint “picturesque cities and
timeless, unspoilt landscapes,” which evoked “a mood of nostalgic Romanticism. “
It was that attraction to pure landscape
that prompted Charles Leickert to travel to Germany
in 1859 and visit the Rhine Valley,
Rudesheim, at that time, Charles Leickert painting sale was
considered old fashioned and critics pointed
out to the “lack of passion and the refined
technique of artists like Shlefhout and
Leickert, which stood in sharp contrast to
the rough and often deliberately unfinished
work by The Hague School and the Amsterdam
painters.” (Kraaij, pg. 80) |
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