Jan Veth
1864–1925 · Kingdom of the Netherlands · Realism, Portraiture
The story
Jan Veth made his name twice over, once with a brush and once with a pen. Born in Dordrecht in 1864, he became one of the most sought-after portraitists in the Netherlands, painting and etching the faces of his generation, among them the German painter Max Liebermann and many of his fellow Dutch artists.
He was also a working critic and poet, close to the Tachtigers, the 'Men of the Eighties,' a circle of young writers who shook up Dutch literature in that decade. Veth wrote about contemporary art for their journal De Nieuwe Gids, making the case in print for the newest painting while producing it himself.
In the 1890s he brought both halves of his life together in a series of 60 lithographed portraits of well-known contemporaries, published in the Amsterdam weeklies. He died in Amsterdam in 1925.
