Jan Hendrik Scheltema (23 August 1861, in The Hague – 9 December 1941, in Brisbane), was a Dutch and later Australian painter who had a prolific, often strenuous, and arguably impressive career in Australia considering he was a non-British migrant artist without an international reputation on arrival and his work was part of the 1898 London Exhibition of Australian Art. After working as a portrait painter in the Netherlands, he specialized in Australia as a livestock and landscape painter, making the livestock genre, particularly the foreground cattle genre, popular there. In Australia, he painted mainly in Victoria when living in Melbourne for almost 5 decades, even through its land boom depression of the 1890s, World War I and the Great Depression, where he also practiced as a painting and drawing teacher. He successfully lived off only his art and art teaching, at one stage owning a few houses, one of which he kept when retiring to Queensland.
Education Three 'pieces' of the very youthful Scheltema have survived and were recently sent to Australia: his huge 'Knife Whetting Machine' made as an eight- or nine-year old with his handwritten explanation of how it worked, his 'Atlas of All Parts of the Earth' at the age of about thirteen years.The 54 page one-of hard cover 'atlas' drawn in ink and water colour, is in the collection of the State Library of Victoria (SLV). and a narrating sketch in pencil of what could be called 'The Stumble of Aunt Henriet'. All three support the likelihood that already from a young age he wanted to become an artist. After attending art lessons in the studio of Rotterdam painter Bergsi, the Melbourne weekly 'Table Talk' of 10 August 1888 p2 and 3, being a 'chatty' or 'anecdotal' text reported to have been submitted by the artist himself, "by letter" as requested by its Editor, according to JHS' letter of 29 July 1888 then having been rejected for a scholarship, but at the same time encouraged in writing by the relevant committee to try again the following year, Scheltema took drawing and painting lessons from the painter J. J. Bertelman (1821–1899) of Gouda for about a year starting in 1879, as he then lived with his parents in Gouda. Bertelman coached him to become a plein-air artist, which included him building his own compact collapsible field easel/portable painting equipment set. His work submitted then scored him a scholarship from King William III of the Netherlands for the years 1880 to 1884 of resp. 350, 450, 500, 500 and 300 guilders.Dr. C. A. W. Jeekel, "With marten hair brush and pallet knife; the life of Dutch-Australian painter Jan Hendrik Scheltema (1861–1941)" (translated title), showing transcribed manuscript letters by Scheltema (to 1898), held in the RKD in The Hague and at the NGV's library in Melbourne. Particularly the hand-illustrated letter by the artist dated 5 April 1879 to his brother, being in the manuscript collection of the S.L.V., records the involvement of Bertelman. Many of these hundreds of manuscript letters by the artist, now in the S.L.V., underscore what is reported here. He studied during 1880 and 1881 at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, now known as University of the Arts. Subsequently, he studied a semester under artist Jan Striening at the Rotterdam Academy in 1883 and from 1883 to 1887 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp, Belgium,Manuscript held at the academy: Registre d'Inscriptions 1880–1885 d'Academie Royale des Beaux Arts d'Anvers - 'Winterkoers' 1883-84, page 146, entry 11 where Charles Verlat was the docent in animal painting. It was reported in Melbourne shortly after his arrival that he "was five years in the studio of Verlat". 'The Argus' of 28 July 1888 p. 11, via NLA Trove. Given his previous studies, that could have included: being taught, being employed to assist on large Verlat commissions, as Verlat is documented to have used quite a number of young artists assist him, or in teaching junior students, as also one of his recorded customs was employing young artists to teach. Or it could have been a mixture of these .
Works
Both in the Netherlands and in Antwerp, Belgium, Scheltema practiced as a figure painter and portrait painter. His best known portraits there are the half body depiction of Johannes van 't Lindenhout (1837–1918), founder of a large educational and employment providing orphanage at Neerbosch, near Nijmegen, Netherlands,F. L. van 't Hoofd, "Lindenhout, Johannes van 't" in 'Biografisch Lexicon voor Geschiedenis van het Nederlandse Protestantism' Part I, Prof. Dr. D. Nauta, et al. (eds), Publ. J. H. Kok, Kampen 1978, p.124. two works of the Rev. Carel Steven Adema van Scheltema (1815–1897), activist in campaigning against alcohol abuse and a portrait of Hendrika Jacoba Stokhuijzen (1816–1872), spouse of the latter and mother of their 13 children. Her image was painted using a monochrome photograph, some years after her death by accidental drowning. All five of these are held by public museums in the Netherlands and were painted in the 1880s. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam holds an etching by Scheltema called "Sitting Woman in an Interior" (RT-P-1913-2831). The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra owns another print from the same plate called "Grandmother". Soon after arrival in Australia in 1888 he decided that portrait painting could not provide him with a living in Melbourne and successfully specialized in rural landscapes with foreground livestock, figures or wildlife being the focus rather than embellishment or perspective indicators. His work often shows the visible brush strokes of the impressionists, but he may be more accurately described as a romantic realist. Almost a thousand paintings depicting his rural scenes are known of him. Yet he also painted some portraits in Australia. For example, the collection of the State Library of Victoria includes his portrait of the soprano Daisy Muriel Pickering. His work is part of at least 26 public collections, most of them in Australia, some in Holland and Britain, but also in New Zealand which he never visited. He usually signed his work as J. H. Scheltema, underlining only the lower case letters, and was also known as John Henry Scheltema in Australia.
Activities and collaborations Scheltema arrived in Melbourne, Australia 7 July 1888 aboard on the French ship SS Oceanien. He joined the Victorian Artists' Society. In Australia his work was soon displayed in the same exhibitions as artists like Charles Conder, Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts and Frederick McCubbin. For some years he lived at 586 Drummond Street, Carlton North, Victoria and had his first studio in Sydney Terrace on Wellington Parade, Melbourne, where he lived the first year.Black, Sylvia, 'Sydney Terrace' in East Melbourne Historical Society Newsletter Vol 15 -No 2-June 2014 p 5-7, ACN A00 390 26Z. His illustrated manuscript letter dated 13 July 1888, now in the State Library of Victoria (SLV), describes that place, even indicates where his furniture is located inside his large rented room. He did however have some 20 different home addresses during the half century he lived in Australia.
From 1889 he had a contractual arrangement with the allegedly Florence-educated Italian landscape painter Charles Rolando with Rolando in the role of employer as Rolando's deteriorating health required him to hire expert assistance with his painting and teaching of his art classes, while Scheltema needed a steady income.Suzanne G. Mellor, 'Rolando, Charles (1844–1893)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/rolando-charles-4500/text7357, published first in hard copy 1976. One of Scheltema's 800 pages of letters in the SLV, the one dated 20 June 1889, discusses and details the contract with Rolando. The wealthy Rolando had similarly been assisted earlier by George A. J. Webb (1861 – 1949), his brother in law, later a portraitist and landscape painter in Melbourne and Adelaide. They sometimes collaborated on the same painting. Scheltema inserted the staffage, mainly animals, but also vegetation, into Rolando's landscapes' settings. They also exhibited together, such as at the premises of art dealers Gemmell, Tuckett and Co of Collins Street, Melbourne in 1891. They would repeatedly take their students into the quite distant Victorian countryside or be invited to a student's family farm, to paint there. Some later art advertisements listed works as by 'Scheltema and Rolando'. Both artists signed those paintings. After Rolando's death in 1893, Scheltema continued to teach Rolando's students together with Webb for Rolando's wife Frances until early 1895. According to his letters he was a close friend of landscape and figure painter J. A. Turner (1850–1908), of teacher and painter T. F. Levick, the frame maker John Thallon and of school teacher in art and painter Robert Camm. With any of the latter three he would repeatedly go bush to paint, with or without some of his students.
Travels Scheltema traveled and painted in Europe again, twice. In 1898–1899 he visited his native Holland, and visited Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and Tunisia. Paintings from this trip were exhibited on his return at his studio in the Cromwell Buildings on Bourke St, opposite the General Post Office.'Art Notes', The Age, 8 Apr 1899, p.13, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/189688019 In 1910, he also spent some time in France, Scotland, England and the Netherlands. Upon his return from this second return voyage, he presented a solo exhibition from 1 to 24 September 1911 with 88 of his paintings in Tuckett Chambers, 359 Collins Street, Melbourne, including many he painted on his last journey. The exhibition was opened by Sir John Madden, the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, addressing about 50 guests. Its 4 page catalogue entitled "J. H. Scheltema's Exhibition of English, Scottish and Australian Paintings", showing descriptions/titles and prices, can be sighted in the National Library of Australia today. The press covered the 1911 exhibition well.e.g.'Mr J. H. Scheltema's Exhibition of Pictures', The Age, 1 Sept 1911, p.9, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/196222270, The Age 2 Sept 2011, p.12, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article196208856 and Jean Sibi, 'Mr Scheltema's Pictures', in Punch, Sept 2011 p.431, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article177532857 71 of the 88 paintings were sold at or before the exhibition where no auction was held.
His works currently Paintings by Scheltema still sell at auction from time to time. In December 2018 a total of 18 works by J. H. Scheltema, previously not known to exist by the art world but held by his family, were discovered in the legacy of the recently deceased widow of the artist's great nephew Dr C. A. W. Jeekel and came to Australia. Most are now part of the collection of the Gippsland Art Gallery, in the town of Sale, Victoria, which displayed them and others in the first Scheltema-only exhibition since 1911, held from 21 March to 9 August 2020, but prematurely closed for the Covid virus, under the title "The Lost Impressionist". It includes the above portrait of his father. The landscape shown below, painted at Alphington, near Melbourne, Scheltema had sent home explaining that such old eucalypts that had survived the ring-barking, the fires and the clearing are 'monuments' from before white settlement.
Recognition