Gerrit van Duffelen, painter and etcher

Gerrit van Duffelen carried a dead brother's name, and a grandfather's. The furniture manufacturer G. J. van Duffelen had eight children, and two earlier sons died in infancy; the name, which was that of the founder's own father, Gerrit van Duffelen, was used again for the boy born in 1889^1 2. His birth act calls him just Gerrit.

On 3 June 1899, aged nine, he laid the first stone of Rochussenstraat 169, with six-year-old Cornelis Pelt beside him³.

The owner photographed the carved stone in 2026. It is still set in the corner's wall, and it names both boys. The other boy's line leads down to the living generation; this page follows the furniture manufacturer's son, who became a painter.

The record names him a painter

The first document to call him a painter is someone else's marriage act. On 9 March 1911 his sister Hendrikje Maria married, Gerrit stood as a witness, and the clerk wrote down his trade along with the rest⁴. He witnessed his sisters' weddings more than once in these years: both the van Driest and the Engelsman marriages of 1911⁵.

At twenty-one he was already a kunstschilder⁶. That same year he passed the state examination for the secondary-school drawing certificate, in the same cohort as the Groningen painter Jan Altink, so from the start the painter was also a qualified drawing teacher⁷.

Where he learned

A who's-who of nearly the same period records how he trained. After school he spent a year as a furniture-maker's apprentice, a year in the family trade at the works his father had built, and then entered the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts.

He was at the Rotterdam academy from 1909 to 1913⁸. A later profile remembered his teachers there, Oldewelt and Van Maasdijk, and among his fellow pupils Henk Chabot, Marius Richters, W. H. Gispen and Piet Zwart. That is all this deep dive shows of where he learned to paint.

The royal subsidy

In March 1914 the state backed him directly. In March 1914 the commission for the royal subsidy to the free art of painting, the Koninklijke subsidie voor de vrije schilderkunst, gave him a grant, and he held it for four years running, 1914 to 1917⁹. Two papers reported it on successive days.

The Haagsche Courant carried the same award the next day. This subsidy is the real honour that a stubborn myth later turned into an Olympic medal¹⁰. The two were merged in the RKD's prize field, copied from a 1969–70 lexicon; the subsidy is confirmed by primary sources, and the medal is false¹¹.

The 169b years

From 1913 to 1923 the address books list him above the works at Rochussenstraat 169b^12 13, and in these years he gave the address himself. When he and Truus Kaleveld announced their engagement in December 1919, the notice printed his side of it plainly: G. van Duffelen … Rotterdam, 169¹⁴.

These were his exhibiting years. In 1914 the Rotterdamsche Kunstkring gave its painting prize to a still life he had entered under the motto Zon¹⁵. The jury's report of the following year settles that the winner was the painter and not his father: G. van Duffelen, geb. te Rotterdam en hier woonachtig, born in Rotterdam and living there¹⁶.

A solo show at the Schiedamsche Singel followed in 1916, and in 1918 the Kunstkring gave its members his De Wilgen as the year's premium print¹⁷. The reviews trace a painter finding his key. In 1918 they praised the young realist; in 1919 a reviewer worried over "strange influences"; February 1922 brought a substantial solo review; and by 1926 came a first cool notice¹⁸. The fullest account from the time is a 1923 profile in Elsevier's Geïllustreerd Maandschrift. It reviewed about fifteen of his paintings, traced his move from colour-rich decorative still lifes towards greys, described the harbour and river etchings he worked up out of doors, and reproduced one of his still lifes.

He married in these years too. On 4 May 1921 the older van Duffelen household left Rochussenstraat 169 for Zeist¹⁹, while Gerrit's own household was forming in Rotterdam. On 24 August 1921, in Amsterdam, he married Geertruida Kaleveld, twenty years old and the daughter of a railway accountant²⁰. The act enters him as a kunstschilder of Rotterdam, aged thirty-one, and his father Gijsbert Johannes stood witness beside a cashier from The Hague²¹.

Two sons followed: Frank on 3 August 1922 and a second boy on 3 November 1923²². Both birth acts give the family's address as Eenhoornstraat 4a in central Rotterdam, not the corner^23 24. The household had already moved there while the street list for the works still printed the painter at 169b^25 26. Gerrit himself declared and signed the younger son's act as kunstschilder, and it names the boy in a clear hand: welk kind zal genaamd worden: Kees²⁷. (An earlier reading of "Elis" was an index mistranscription; the act reads Kees.)

His commercial work of these years is easy to under-count. In 1922 he designed the advertising poster for the Holland-Oost-Azië Lijn²⁸. It was long misfiled under a namesake with shipping connections, but the Rijksmuseum and the RCE credit it to the painter himself²⁹. In the winter of 1922–23 the Holland-Amerika Lijn commissioned him to illustrate its fiftieth-anniversary memorial book, De Holland-Amerika Lijn 1873–1923³⁰. And when W. Noorduyn retired as director of the Rotterdam Zeevaartschool in July 1923, his students gave him an etching of a ship by Gerrit van Duffelen³¹.

He kept exhibiting, and Pictura in Dordrecht became a regular venue³². In the spring of 1924 he showed a large Naakt (Nude), priced at eight hundred guilders, at Pictura in Dordrecht, and a local paper reviewed it as of "great pictorial worth"³³. From a 1924 Pictura members' exhibition the Dordrechts Museum bought his canvas of sunflowers before the studio window³⁴. The press, the NRC of 13 December 1924 and Het Vaderland two days later, titles it Zonnebloemen voor het atelierraam; the museum catalogue calls it Zonnebloemen in glazen vaas³⁵.

Two years later a Rotterdam museum took his work as well. In June 1926 a fellow townsman gave Museum Boijmans his drawing Droogdok, Dry Dock³⁶.

The 1926 gift is documented, but neither the Boijmans catalogue nor Collectie Nederland identifies a current online object-level record for it³⁷. The 1932 Wie is dat? entry confirms independently that it entered the museum: among his works it lists Schip in droogdok in Museum Boymans³⁸.

The Land van Hoboken, etched

One work closes a circle. The Rijksprentenkabinet of the Rijksmuseum holds roughly eleven of his etchings, among them Land van Hoboken in Rotterdam, etched in 1919 and given by the artist himself in 1932 (RP-P-1932-112)³⁹. The boy who laid the corner's first stone grew up to make an etching named for the Land van Hoboken, the estate at whose edge the corner stood^40 41. We know the print by its title and catalogue entry, not by what it shows. His work is also held by the Rijksakademie, the Dordrechts Museum, the Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, Museum Meermanno and Deventer's Museum De Waag⁴².

To Amsterdam

In June 1926 he was still leeraar aan de Rotterdamsche Academie, and that year the painter Huib Luns brought him to Amsterdam to teach anatomy and free drawing at the state institute for training drawing teachers^43 44. He had left the corner well before that. The household moved from Rochussenstraat 169 to Eenhoornstraat 4a, where the address books list him in 1923 and 1924⁴⁵, and then to Schiebroek, where his son Jaap was born in January 1926⁴⁶. Only then came Amsterdam, by way, a later profile recalled, of a farmhouse at Amstelveen before the family settled in the city⁴⁷. His name drops out of the Rochussenstraat street list after 1923. That marks the move to the Eenhoornstraat, whose houses have their own deep dive, not the later move to Amsterdam.

He taught there until 1946, according to his 1964 profile⁴⁸, and the later notices most often frame him as a teacher^49 50. His pupils over the years included Bob Buys, Jan Groenestijn, Hans van Dokkum, Frida Hunziker and Margaretha Verheus, and he belonged to the Amsterdam artists' societies Arti et Amicitiae and St. Lucas^51 52.

The 1942 interview

One item in his record needs care. In January 1942, under the occupation, the pro-German cultural weekly De Waag printed an interview with him⁵³. Its interviewer, Jaap Valk, conducted and signed it, and his account attributes to Gerrit views congenial to the occupation's cultural programme⁵⁴. We record the interview and quote it, but read no membership or consequence into it; its own method note sets out how far that one source goes.

Bloemendaal, and the end

He spent his last decade at Bloemendaal and went on painting it. In 1956 a couple from Overveen gave the municipality of Bloemendaal his painting Het Kopje in de winter, which shows the well-known toboggan run on the Hoge Duin- en Daalseweg, to hang in the town hall⁵⁵. On his seventieth birthday in 1959, a Haarlem paper judged that he "mag dan geen figuur zijn van de omwenteling in de beeldende kunst", no figure of the revolution in art, but was "een zeer gevoelig medium", a very sensitive medium⁵⁶. The next year, reviewing a still life in Het Parool, the critic J. M. Prange called it "een goed en beschaafd stilleven", a good and cultivated still life⁵⁷. What the notices praise most is the teacher whose pupils outgrew him. He died at Bloemendaal in early April 1967, aged seventy-seven, and was cremated at Westerveld⁵⁸. His obituary recorded that he "van 1925 tot 1955 in Amsterdam woonde en werkte", lived and worked in Amsterdam from 1925 to 1955⁵⁹. The 1964 profile instead dates his move there to 1926⁶⁰; his teaching ended in 1946, which does not by itself say when he left Amsterdam.

The works that survive him, and his likenesses

Most of his output we can name but not reproduce. The RKD photographed some three dozen of his works, along with a run of auction records, spanning the 1910s to the 1950s: still lifes of flowers and fruit, harbour etchings, Amsterdam and Rotterdam cityscapes^61 62. They remain in copyright until 2038, so only the public-collection pieces above and the family-held works his granddaughter released can be shown^63 64. The photographed works include Het Scheepsmodel, an Uitgebloeide Zonnebloem annotated 1946, De Hef, a Scheepswerf te Rotterdam (17 × 21 cm), a Scheepvaart te Rotterdam (17 × 24 cm) and a pollard willow annotated 1917, sold through dealers such as Simonis & Buunk and the Vendu Notarishuis⁶⁵. The prints are darker than the sunflowers suggest. The Rijksprentenkabinet holds his Dode roek (dead rook, RP-P-1932-111), a Schedel met hoed en handschoenen (skull with hat and gloves, RP-P-1932-113) and a Man in bed (RP-P-1932-115), and Museum Meermanno keeps four bookplates he cut for his own sons, Kees and Frank⁶⁶.

Photographs of him do survive, in his family. In August 2026 his granddaughter sent the project some of the few she has, with pictures of the works she keeps, and the set was cleared for publication⁶⁷. Outside the family no photograph of him is known online. The best public likeness is his own self-portrait Zelfportret met pijp bij raam, whose provenance was recovered at a Leiden auction house in 2022. A curiosity attaches to it: the image the Olympic database serves as his 1928 "athlete photo" is that self-portrait. A second likeness exists at one remove, a 1957 black-chalk portrait of him drawn by Willem Gerard Hofker and held at the Rijksmuseum. Both are in copyright and shown here only in words.

The one work of his the building itself now holds came to it by chance. In August 2026 the present owner of Rochussenstraat 169 acquired his watercolour De Rijn vanaf de Grebbeberg from a Utrecht dealer, with a provenance in a Driebergen country-house collection⁶⁸. No personal tie between the painter and that family is documented. It is best read as an ordinary market purchase, the site's closing object rather than a fact of his life.

Claims the dossier had to kill

Records around a minor painter fill up with other men's mistakes, and several had to be cleared away.

He did not win an Olympic medal. By the Olympedia record he competed in the 1928 art competitions with a work called Jongen met slee and won nothing⁶⁹. The bronze medal sometimes attached to his name begins in a 1969–70 lexicon, was copied into the RKD prize field, and comes from a confusion with his real honour, the royal subsidy of 1914⁷⁰.

He did not sail to New York. A passenger list has a "Gerrit van Duffelen" arriving from New York on the ss Ryndam on 14 April 1928, and it has been read as the painter emigrating.

The passenger has a middle initial, "Mr. Gerrit P. van Duffelen". He is Gerrit Pieter van Duffelen, born 1905 into a different, shipping-connected family, and the record is a return from New York, not a departure for it⁷¹. That same namesake, not the painter, is the man once thought to have drawn the 1922 shipping poster, before the attribution was reversed⁷².

Nor had he a documented Rome period. He trained at the Rotterdam academy from 1909 to 1913, appears on no Prix de Rome winners' list, and could not have won a prize of the Amsterdam academy⁷³. His Italian travel was landscape study in the Dolomites and Liguria, with no stay at a Rome academy⁷⁴. The eighteenth-century "Vedute di Roma" etchings sold under his name on auction sites are misfiled Piranesi prints, made more than a century before he was born⁷⁵.

Two smaller traps lie alongside. The four "van Duffelen" objects in Museum Rotterdam are the felt designer Esther van Duffelen's, not his, so that museum is a null for him⁷⁶. And in his 1924 Pictura submission, the adjacent still life and woodcuts on the same page of the letter are Alex Dorgelo's, not works of his⁷⁷.

The plain life is remarkable enough without the myths. The first-stone boy became a working painter, made an etching titled Land van Hoboken in Rotterdam, after the estate at whose edge his father's works stood, taught a generation in two cities, and died at seventy-seven. Outside his family, his best-known likeness is a self-portrait.