SCHELTEMA, JAN HENDRIK (1861-1941)

“Wild Horses” (c.1900)
Oil on canvas
41 x 56cm
Signed lower right
*private collection, Sydney
 
Scheltema was a leading Dutch-born Australian Genre Painter. He studied during 1880–1882 at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, now known as University of the Arts. Subsequently, he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp, Belgium, where Charles Verlat was the docent in animal painting. After he arrived in Australia in 1888 JH Scheltema began painting cows, horses and sheep in a landscape – the “livestock in the foreground” genre for which he became known. His four-year collaboration (1889–1893) with Melbourne painter Charles Rolando educated JH Scheltema in the marketing of artworks. The wealthy Rolando funded several joint painting trips throughout rural Victoria, which the emerging artist would not have been able to afford otherwise. During the economic downturn of the 1890’s many of Scheltema’s more well-known contemporaries, whose art sales in Melbourne were insufficient to sustain them, went elsewhere. In early 1909 JH Scheltema embarked on his second painting trip to Europe and the UK, including several weeks in Scotland. On his return in 1911 he held a large solo exhibition, selling seventy- two of the eighty-eight paintings hanging there. JH Scheltema remained in Melbourne and continued to sell his work throughout WWI and the Great Depression. JH Scheltema became an Australian citizen in 1935. He continued to paint until three years before his death in Brisbane in 1941. Scheltema is represented in all major Australian National Galleries & Institutions, and is highly sought after by collectors. This is one of the best examples of his work on the open market!!