In the coming months various paintings from Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder will be on show in a number of exhibitions in Dutch museums.
The School Class by Jan Joseph Horemans II (1714-after 1790) is on loan from 27 March for Children of All Ages, an exhibition in the North Brabant Museum in Den Bosch. This presentation of cultural history explores how children have lived throughout the
centuries. The exhibits range from children's portraits to clothes, furniture, dolls and silver rattles.
Horemans' painting is included in the exhibition as an example of what classrooms used to look like. With a remarkable feeling for atmosphere, the painter has captured the everyday events of a simple country school. While the rest of the class quietly works, some of the pupils are handing eggs to the teacher. This apparently depicts the way teachers were paid - in goods rather than money. Village teachers were notoriously underpaid and any extra contributions would have been welcome.
The delightful Still Life with Flowers by Willem Grasdorp (1678-1723) is on show from 20 September to late November at an exhibition on artists in Zwolle in the new building of the Stedelijk Museum in Zwolle.
This city was the birthplace of one of the most famous painters of the Golden Age, Gerard ter Borch. In addition to work by this artist, the museum also features paintings by less well-known fellow townsmen such as Pieter van Noort, Roelof Koets and
Hendrick ten Oever.
Unlike artists in large cities, Zwolle's painters did not specialize in particular genres - which obviously reflects the limited demand for paintings in this provincial town. One exception was Willem Grasdorp, who concentrated exclusively on flower and
fruit still lifes. In fact it was not long before he moved to Amsterdam, where the market was far larger. Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder's still life is a typical example of the elegant and loosely composed bouquets which became a favourite in the later
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.