Jan Voerman

For most of his long life Jan Voerman painted one stretch of water again and again, until people simply called him the IJssel painter. Born in Kampen in 1857, he studied at the state academy in Amsterdam and then in Antwerp under the Belgian painter Charles Verlat.

His early years were spent in Amsterdam among the artists of the 1880s, and his subjects then were the city's poorer quarters, the working people of the Jordaan district and scenes of Jewish life. What changed everything was moving home to the river. Around 1895 he had a house built on the dike at Hattem by the young architect Karel de Bazel, with a wide view over the IJssel, and from there he painted the water and above all the towering Dutch clouds in pale, luminous colour.

He stayed at Hattem for the rest of his life, working in oil and in delicate watercolour, including close studies of flowers. He died there in 1941, and much of his work now hangs a short walk from where he made it, in the Voerman Museum in Hattem.