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Lot Essay
In 1956 W.C. Feltkamp - a cousin of H.P. Bremmer, Van der Leck's lifelong patron - published the first, by our standards rather hagiographic, biography of Van der Leck. Although he mentions the Mother and child only in passing, Feltkamp's treatment of several paintings executed around the same time reflects the atmosphere in which they were made, the goals that inspired them, and the appreciation Van der Leck must have enjoyed towards the end of his life. The following excerpts may serve to illustrate this point.
"But first, a painter has to feel something intensely himself, and secondly, he must find a form that effectively conveys what he feels, a form that arouses the same sentiments in us, by other means than through association. Van der Leck's previous work demonstrates that he already possessed a basis of pure conviction. But here, on that basis, he treats his subject in such a way as to evoke in us a sense of that joyful future [...]
The remarkable thing is that, through his blocks of colour, Van der Leck keeps his representation two-dimensional and adjusts his picture-space accordingly, while suggesting depth without perspective [...] Nor does his form become rigid, in spite of the blocks, because everywhere there are accents of what he sees, and they keep the image lively [...] Though his followers may also start 'thinking in blocks', never could they achieve anything like the power of suggestion through which Van der Leck creates movement and, above all, joy [...]
From W.C. Feltkamp, B.A. van der Leck. Leven en werken, Leiden [1956], pp. 78-86.
We kindly thank Cees Hilhorst for his help in cataloguing the present lot.
"But first, a painter has to feel something intensely himself, and secondly, he must find a form that effectively conveys what he feels, a form that arouses the same sentiments in us, by other means than through association. Van der Leck's previous work demonstrates that he already possessed a basis of pure conviction. But here, on that basis, he treats his subject in such a way as to evoke in us a sense of that joyful future [...]
The remarkable thing is that, through his blocks of colour, Van der Leck keeps his representation two-dimensional and adjusts his picture-space accordingly, while suggesting depth without perspective [...] Nor does his form become rigid, in spite of the blocks, because everywhere there are accents of what he sees, and they keep the image lively [...] Though his followers may also start 'thinking in blocks', never could they achieve anything like the power of suggestion through which Van der Leck creates movement and, above all, joy [...]
From W.C. Feltkamp, B.A. van der Leck. Leven en werken, Leiden [1956], pp. 78-86.
We kindly thank Cees Hilhorst for his help in cataloguing the present lot.