Mountain Lake

About this artwork.

Mountain Lake from 1950 is typical of the style of painter Jan Altink (1885 - 1971) and makes him, more than any other member of art society De Ploeg, the “landscape painter of the art society”. He made the work in the Contraperformance Scheme, the predecessor of the Visual Artists Scheme (BKR), a scheme through which artists were financially supported by the municipality in exchange for their works of art.

Jan Altink was a versatile painter of expressionism. At the age of fifteen he started at the Academy Minerva as a student at the evening course. Painter Franciscus Hermanus Bach encouraged Altink to paint outdoors in the Groningen countryside, which is how he developed his love of working outdoors. In May 1918 he was one of the founders of the well-known Groningen art society De Ploeg for which he had also invented the name.

Altink paints high skies, distant horizons and enormous fields. Verges full of cow parsley, rows of pollard willows along a ditch. Romantic villages with a church at the highest point. Farms in the middle of the immense width of the agricultural plots, hidden in the green. Contrasting color areas. A canalized river that cuts through the landscape.

In 1955, because of his impressive art achievement, he was awarded the Cultural Prize of the province of Groningen. The Jan Altinkstraat named after him can be found in Ten Boer.

Facts & Figures.

• Artist(s)
  Jan Altink

• Year of creation
  1950

• Dimensions (in cm)
  77x90

• Collection
  Town Hall Collection

• Technic
  Tempera