Mother and child

Hendrik Johannes Haverman (1857-1928) was a painter, graphic artist and art critic and was considered one of the most important painters of his time.

Haverman studied at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam and at the art academies of Antwerp and Brussels. He was a pupil of August Allebé and Hendrik Valkenburg and worked in Amsterdam, Diepenveen and The Hague.

In 1889, Hendrik Haverman left his native city for a journey, via Granada, to North Africa, where he was inspired by the exotic surroundings to produce many etchings, watercolors and paintings of markets, temples and desert scenes.

Haverman had a broad oeuvre, painting portraits, landscapes and townscapes, among other things. Around the turn of the century, Haverman became one of the most important artists in the Netherlands. His work was well received by several major collectors, including H.W. Mesdag, who owned several works by Haverman, and Teding van Berkhout, whose collection is now part of the Teylers Museum.

In 1918, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, he was offered an “honorary exhibition” in Pulchri Studio in The Hague.

When Haverman died on 11 August 1928 in The Hague, he was an Officer in the Orde of Oranje-Nassau, a Knight in the Order of St. Michael of Bavaria, a recipient of the Cross of Merit of Hungary and a Knight in the Leopold Order of Belgium. This guy!

In 1930, the art critic Johan de Meester called him “…a striking, entirely individual personality, a pure, interesting figure, who occupies a prominent place in Dutch painting of his time.”

In February 2008, art gallery Pygmalion in Maarssen opened the exhibition ‘The eighties painter H.J. Haverman (1857-1928) & contemporaries’, the first exhibition after his death in 1928.