Bernardus Johannes Blommers

Although trained in his father's profession of lithography, Bernardus Johannes Blommers turned to painting and studied at the Drawing Academy in the Hague. His first major success was a painting exhibited prominently at the Triennial Exhibition in Amsterdam in 1865. Blommers is considered a member of the Hague School, which was led by his friends Willem Maris (1844-1910) and Josef Israels (1824-1911), older artists whose styles and choice of subjects-everyday scenes in the lives of peasants, fishermen, and their families--greatly influenced his art. Blommers often painted children, most appealingly in his later works, which were more broadly painted than his earlier, cabinet-sized pictures. Blommers's work sold well and was especially popular in England, Scotland, and the United States, where he visited the Philadelphia artist Edward Taylor Snow (1844-1913) and sat for Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), who executed a bust-length portrait in 1904 (Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio).

Biography courtesy of Schwarz Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/schwarzphila