oil on canvas, signed (upper right)
framed

Note: In 1908, on the advice of Willem Knip, the successful painter WGF Jansen settled in the Gooi area, where he lived and worked in the former Blaricum Brewery. WGF Jansen was charmed by the Gooi landscape, which can often be seen in his work, which can be characterized as a typical after-bloom of the Hague School. WGF Jansen is known to have been a great admirer of The Hague Scholers such as Jacob Maris and Anton Mauve. WGF Jansen gradually developed his own impressionist style. He was known as an extremely skilled painter with a powerful and balanced temperament, who did not allow himself to be influenced by anything or anyone in his vision. Despite his friendship with many artists from Laren, he developed his own independent style of work. He was widely praised for his highly developed sense of colour nuances and his smooth brushwork. He sold well, far beyond the country's borders. Jansen was a landscape painter in the broadest sense of the word. With a few exceptions, his oeuvre mainly includes river views, forest landscapes, beach views and cityscapes. Work by WGF Jansen is included in the collection of the Singer Museum in Laren. And can also be seen in Galerie Wijdemeren, alongside work by other well-known Laren painters. Jansen lived and worked in Haarlem, Amsterdam and Blaricum. He also worked a lot in the field in Brabant and Drenthe. He was also a student of the arts and crafts school in Haarlem. He started out as a pottery painter and later painted many landscapes with cows and horses, cityscapes and beach views with shell fishermen, all in the vein of the Hague School. Willem George Frederik Jansen was born in Harlingen on 25 December 1871 and started his career as an artist at the age of 20. Before that, he trained as a blacksmith and worked at the State Railways in Tilburg, at Figee in Haarlem and at the Conrad shipyard in Haarlem. His friendship there with a decorative painter marked a turning point in his life and he decided to study decorative arts at the arts and crafts school in Haarlem. After his education, he worked as a decorative painter in Amsterdam and mainly painted ceilings in Den Bosch, Leeuwarden and Maastricht. He was then offered a job in the earthenware factory Rozenburg where he could work on his own designs for a long time until he was offered a position in the earthenware factory in Gouda and later in the earthenware factory "De Distel" in Amsterdam. That Jansen has done well in pottery is proven by the many awards he received for this. He won the silver medal in St. Louis and the gold medal of "Arti et Industriae" for pottery designs in The Hague. In 1898 he married Hillegonda Zijlstra and between 1903 and 1908 he lived in The Hague and Amsterdam. It is written that after a visit to Willen Knip in Laren, he was persuaded by him to come to the Gooi where he settled shortly afterwards on June 19, 1908 in the former "Brewery" in Blaricum, where several painters had lived and worked before him. He was particularly interested in the work of Josef Israëls, Anton Mauve and Jacob Maris. He became a member of the Haagse Kunstkring and became friends with its founder, Theophile de Bock. There he must have become acquainted with the work of Jan Toorop, Thorn Prikker, Van Gogh and the new movements from Belgium and France at an early age. Despite all this, he remained true to his own style. After a short stay in Haarlem, Jansen moved to Amsterdam in 1906. During the difficult years of the war, he devoted himself to helping people in hiding. Jansen was certainly a master in colouring and his palette had a wide range of greys and whites just for his cloudy skies. But also in peasant scenes with ploughing horses or oxen, sensitivity to colour is his trademark. Trees, meadows, the ploughed fields are recognizable by a wide variety of greens and ochres, with an airy woolly touch. Undoubtedly, he was one of the highly skilled artists in the Gooi region. He continued to live in Blaricum until he died on 21 June 1949 at the age of 77.