Blossoms and Bugs
Still Life with Flowers on a Marble Ledge

Oil-on-canvas, signed on reverse

Painting: 20 ¼” x 17 ¾”
Frame: 26 ¾” x 23” SAFA/11078

Working the Field

Oil on canvas. signed lower right

Painting17" x 24 3/4"
Frame: 28" x 35 1/4"

Ten Kate was known for his landscapes, beach scenes and genre paintings. Born in Amsterdam, he was the son of Johannes Mari ten Kate, under whom he most likely studied. He lived and worked in the Hague and was a member of the Hague Artists’ Society and the Pulchri Studio (latin:"for the study of beauty"), a Dutch art society, art institution and art studio based in the Hague. The countryside around the coastal town of the Hague provided a rural environment and an unspoiled landscape which attracted many young artists of the nineteenth century eager to escape the strictures of academic art guilds.

Oil on panel, signed and dated: “1865.”

Painting size: 9” x 6.75”
Frame size: 14.5” x 12.5”

Petrus Theodorus Van Wyngaerdt (also spelled Wyngaerdt or Wijngaerdt) was born in Rotterdam. A student of J.H. Van de Laar, he painted genre scenes and portraits, as did his older brother, painter Anthonie Jacobus Van Wyngaerdt.

In "Eavesdropping", Van Wyngaerdt depicts a well-known theme from popular 19th-century French and Dutch prints-- a Roccoco figure listening at a door while a private conversation (or event) is underway. The women’s yellow skirt, pink bodice and lacy cap suggest that she is a lady (of sorts) and her plump arms, pretty features and sly expression suggest what may be going on behind closed doors.

Van Wyngaerdt’s work can be found in the collections of the Haarlem Museum. He is listed in Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs (Bénézit, 1999).