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(b Amsterdam, Dec 4, 1868; d Bloemendaal, Dec 31, 1938).

Dutch painter, printmaker, illustrator, writer and stained-glass artist. He trained at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam (1886–90), under the directorship of August Allebé. Having initially painted and drawn Impressionistic landscapes, he started working in the ’t Gooi region in 1892, where, influenced by Vincent van Gogh and Jan Toorop, he made a number of Symbolist drawings and lithographs. In 1896 he married the Dutch writer Henriette van der Schalk. They both devoted themselves to the recently founded Sociaal Democratische Arbeiders Partij. In the years up to c. 1900 Holst produced among other things a series of lithographs of political cartoons with socialist content, as well as serene landscapes and paintings of girls from the village of Huizen. His allegorical murals (1902; in situ), on topics such as ‘Industry’ or ‘Commerce’, in the new Koopmansbeurs in Amsterdam by H. P. Berlage (1876–1903), marked an important point in his career as his first opportunity to construct a monumental piece of work. Partly inspired by the murals in the town hall at ’s Hertogenbosch by Antoon Derkinderen, he developed a tight, stylized type of design, which he believed to be ideal for visually representing idealistic and exalted thoughts. In his murals (...

(b The Hague, June 6, 1868; d Cologne, March 5, 1932).

Dutch painter, printmaker, mosaicist and stained-glass artist. He attended the Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten in The Hague (1881–8). During this period he painted mainly landscapes in the style of The Hague school. Until c. 1896 he produced Symbolist works, in which the emphatic line flow and the subtle colour shading are especially noticeable, for example The Bride (1893; Otterlo, Kröller-Müller). From 1892 until 1897 he corresponded with Henri Borel, partly about his Symbolist work, often drawing in the letters. During this time he came into close contact with Belgian artists, in particular with Henry Van de Velde through whom he was able to exhibit with Les XX in Brussels. In summer he regularly stayed in Visé, where he produced pastel drawings in a rhythmic pointillism, a style with which he could achieve a form of abstraction.

From 1896 Thorn Prikker concentrated on the applied arts, designing batiks, stained glass, murals, mosaics, furniture and bindings. In ...

(b Cincinnati, OH, Aug 4, 1853; d Gloucester, MA, Aug 8, 1902).

American painter and printmaker. He began as a painter of window-shades but developed one of the most personal and poetic visions in American landscape painting, portraying nature on canvases that were, in the words of Childe Hassam, ‘strong, and at the same time delicate even to evasiveness’. His first artistic training was under Frank Duveneck, with whom he studied first in Cincinnati and then in Munich (1875–7). His absorption of the Munich style, characterized by bravura brushwork and dextrous manipulation of pigment, with the lights painted as directly as possible into warm, dark grounds derived from Frans Hals and Courbet, is reflected in such paintings as Venice Landscape (1878; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.) and Landscape (c. 1882; Utica, NY, Munson–Williams–Proctor Inst.)

Twachtman became increasingly dissatisfied with the Munich style’s lack of draughtsmanship, so he went to Paris in 1883 to study at the Académie Julian. In the winter he concentrated on drawing, and in the summer he painted in the Normandy countryside and at Arques-la-Bataille, near Dieppe. ...