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Blommers, Bernard[us] (Johannes)
(b The Hague, 31 Jan 1845; d The Hague, 15 Dec 1914). Dutch painter and printmaker. He was already an accomplished lithographer when he went to study with Christoffel Bisschop (1828–1904) in The Hague. Until 1868 he was taught by Johan Philip Koelman at the Hague Academie where he met Willem Maris. In 1870 he visited Paris and stayed with Jacob Maris. His work from this period—interiors of fishermen’s cottages, usually with two figures, such as the Fisherman’s Breakfast (1872; The Hague, Gemeentemus.)—is strongly reminiscent of the early work of Jozef Israëls. Critics thought it showed a search for truth and colour. In the early 1870s Blommers constructed a Scheveningen fisherman’s interior in his studio in which he painted half-length figures of muscular fishermen’s wives, presumably based on his own wife, who came from Scheveningen. His Where Are the Little Doves? (c. 1875; untraced), which shows a mother lifting up her child to look at the doves, was particularly successful. The critic Jacobus van Santen Kolff (1848–96) described it as ‘deeply poetical through an intensity of feeling and truth’. Van Santen Kolff also appreciated the artist’s broad touch, rich use of colour and clear drawing.
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- Blommers, Bernard (Johannes)
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