Biography

Discussion

The painter and graphic artist Willem Witsen is considered one of the Amsterdam Impressionists, as was the painter George Breitner. In his free time, Witsen was a passionate practitioner of photography. In contrast to most of the painters who photographed at this time—who were secretive about their photographic activity for fear of being seen as copyists of photos, among them George Breitner—Witsen was relatively open about his endeavours in this area. Nevertheless, his photos were circulated only among his private circle of family and friends, for whom they were taken. Witsen’s oeuvre consists of several hundred photos, which can generally be classified into the following categories: family portraits, portraits of friends, Amsterdam cityscapes, and travel mementos.

Witsen is likely to have started taking photos in the year 1890. How and from whom he learned to photograph is known up to a point. Witsen owned a copy of the ‘Gids voor den Amateur-Fotograaf’ (‘Guide for the Amateur Photographer’), written by the photographer Joseph Jessurun de Mesquita and published in 1889. Although he personally knew the author through mutual friends, it is not known whether Mesquita was actually the one who introduced him to photography. It could very well have been the amateur photographer Albert Kapteyn, whom Witsen visited in London, or perhaps his friend George Breitner. What is certain, is that in 1890, Witsen went on ‘photography outings’ together with Kapteyn in London and that the two men discussed art photography on a frequent basis.

Witsen’s legacy of negatives consists of glass plates and film pack nitrate negatives. The glass plates in the format 13×18 cm are the earliest; in the second half of the 1890s, he also used smaller format glass negatives of 9×12 cm; shortly after the turn of the century, he switched to film pack nitrate film in the format 9×12 cm. There is also a wooden plate camera preserved in his legacy.

Just as Breitner, Witsen made his prints on daylight paper and pasted these onto the (black) cardboard mounts available on the market. The few prints that have survived are typically contact prints of the negatives, though he also made enlargements.

While Witsen was perhaps never professionally trained in photography, his eye for the specific visual capabilities of the photographic medium was better than most of his contemporaries who were professionally schooled. Flattering poses were not to his taste, nor did he do any retouching. Witsen had no desire to follow the photographic conventions of his day, but instead favoured his own approach. As an impressionist painter, light was his most important visual device. Witsen ‘sculpted’ his subjects with strong contrasts in light and dark. Accordingly, plasticity and depth are abundantly present in Witsen’s photos. He also applied selective areas of sharpness in order to create depth. He preferred to photograph outdoors in daylight. In his studio, he used artificial light, usually from a single light source. Witsen was not alone when it came to applying light in a painterly fashion. A plasticity achieved by means of contrast can also be observed in the photos of several of his contemporaries, including George Breitner and Thomas Eakins. In Dutch professional photography of the 1890s, the use of light for ‘modelling’ purposes was still quite uncommon. Witsen was also unorthodox in daring to photograph full-frame. He applied framing to crop portraits, when he believed he could strengthen an individual’s personal characteristics by doing so. Witsen’s approach to composing and artistically directing a portrait photo was well-conceived. When the situation called for it, however, he used his camera with speed and spontaneity. ‘Snapshots’ are therefore a regular occurrence. Witsen liked to experiment with double images: portraits reflected in a mirror, a person across from him captured together with his own image in a single shot, or a combination print comprising two shots of the same person. In these endeavours, he sometimes obtained very remarkable results.

Through his liberal treatment of the camera, Witsen learned to master a specific photographic idiom of form. Close-ups, image crops, selective sharpness, and combination prints were used as visual devices, several decades in advance of their discovery by other photographers.

Unlike Breitner, Witsen rarely used his photos as models for his etchings and paintings. Only three portraits in Witsen’s photographic oeuvre have been redone in another technique: an etching from a photo of Willem Kloos taken in 1894, a painting from a photo of Willem (Pam) Witsen Jr. taken in 1897, and a drawing from a portrait photo of Marius Bauer.

Without doubt, Witsen’s portrait photos dating from the first ten years of his photographic activity make up the most interesting part of his oeuvre. These are the portraits of his artist friends, enthrallingly photographed and significant as historic documents. Witsen was the central figure of a large circle of friends. In this group were a number of poets and writers associated with De Nieuwe Gids, e.g. Willem Kloos, Hein Boeken, P.L. Tak, Charles van Deventer, Arnold Ising, Jac. van Looy and Pet Tideman, the publisher Willem Versluys and his wife Annette Versluys-Poelman, the writers Arthur van Schendel, Jan Hofker, and Frederik van Eden, musicians such as Alphons Diepenbrock, and artists such as Isaac Israëls, George Breitner, Ed Karsen and Mau van der Valk.

Witsen’s home was a refuge and a place to gather; one could describe it as an artist’s salon. Witsen was always in the position to welcome his friends with a glass of fine wine and aromatic cigars. As the son of a wealthy merchant, he had no desire to live a life weighed down by material concerns. When necessary—as was the case on more than one occasion for friends such as George Breitner, Arthur van Schendel, Hein Boeken, Jac. van Looy, Nol Ising, and Willem Kloos—he acted as a benefactor, even when he was unable to afford it and obliged to approach his father for additional financial support. It requires a bit of effort to form an image of this calm, closed, even somewhat reserved man—who was also hard of hearing—based on what has been written about him. For many, he was a very trustworthy and devoted friend. Willem Kloos, in particular, experienced this during his numerous periods of depression.

Witsen was the first photographer of the nineteenth century in the Netherlands who worked at depicting a person’s character in portrait photography. He photographed his friends—painters, writers, poets, and musicians—in various ways: either posing seriously or in positions more candid and somewhat unconventional. Whenever anyone came to visit him, either at his Amsterdam studio or his villa in Ede, Witsen always reached for his camera. Guests would sometimes pose with his children, sometimes in groups of two or three friends, but usually alone. Witsen focused on people’s moods and predisposition. When the great Dutch poet Willem Kloos—or a lesser god like Hein Boeken—leaned back tired in his chair with a glass of wine in the hand, Witsen captured him at that precise moment, showing his exhausted state in his photo. Kloos’ tormented, pock-ridden face is often photographed from close up. In a letter dated 21 July 1892, Pieter L. Tak, editor of De Nieuwe Gids, wrote to thank Witsen for the photos he had taken: ‘Particularly nice is the contrast between the stately gentleman farmer profile portrait and the much more brazen en face.’ During gatherings at Witsen’s studio, the wine was usually flowing before the camera had even been taken out of its bag. In the subsequent festive atmosphere, the camera’s eye caught the same kinds of images taken at the studio of Israël Kiek, the renowned photographer from Leiden. Just as university students gathered together in folly, so too did Witsen and his friends circle around in front of the camera, with their faces all gathered together.

Witsen’s family members are certain to have been photographed just as frequently as his many friends. His portraits of his wife Betsy van Vloten—by all appearances a highly introvert woman—are dream-like. His children are typically photographed at play, sometimes hanging around in a chair, or sitting on someone’s lap: rarely are they posed. Contrary to portraits made by the official portrait studios, in which children were portrayed as miniature adults, Witsen’s photos show real children, in moments of delight and anger.

Towards the end of the century, Witsen investigated other topics more frequently than before. He began venturing out into the city with his camera. He also took it with him during biking trips and sailing excursions. In these outdoor shots, Witsen devoted significant attention to composition, making use, when possible, of contrasts in light and dark. In some of these cityscapes, one feels the same serene atmosphere encountered in his etchings, which were also rich in contrast. Witsen’s series of etchings of Amsterdam cityscapes are exceptional for the fineness of detail, the fall of the light, contrasts (dark shadows and white snow), and serenity. They depict ‘frozen’ moments taken from everyday life, exactly as a camera captures and preserves a single instant. On occasion, Witsen tried to express movement in his photos by making the foreground sharp and the background blurry, such as when he photographed Jan Hofker around 1897, walking along the waters of the IJ River. More often than not, however, his outdoor shots conveyed the same tranquility as his etchings.

Witsen’s photographic oeuvre likewise includes shots of cavalry exercises on the heath. This subject was primarily a favourite subject of his friend George Breitner, whose legacy as well comprises photos of the cavalry. There is no way to attribute these photos specifically to either of the two men based on technical or stylistic considerations. Both artists exchanged photos on occasion, as affirmed by an undated letter written by Breitner to Witsen: ‘Nol [Ising, I.Th.L] told me that you are currently specifically working with enlargements. I’d like to ask you if you perhaps had a piece of heathland (foreground) for me, I’d be very grateful to you…’

Witsen travelled frequently during his life, in Europe and beyond. In the 1870s and ’80s, Paris and London appealed greatly to him. Around the turn of the century, he travelled farther into the heart of Europe, visiting Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Witsen’s negatives legacy holds approximately two hundred shots taken during these trips. Based on the fact that these negatives originate from Witsen’s legacy, he is attributed as the photographer. An additional argument for such an attribution is the simple observation that Witsen himself is not seen in any of the photos, while it is certain he was part of the group. Whatever the case may be, when compared to the portrait photos and cityscapes taken in the 1890s, these photos are less striking and lack the spontaneous spirit of the earlier period. They are nothing more (and nothing less) than fairly successful holiday photos. As far as is known, none of the photos that Witsen took during his travels to San Francisco in 1915 and the Dutch East Indies in 1920–’21 have been preserved. Annotations made in his daily journal during the latter trip reveal he purchased a camera and subsequently photographed landscapes and other subjects.

The family photos that Witsen took in the period directly preceding and during his second marriage are as well little more than a collection of snapshots. These photos are attributed to Witsen on the same grounds as his travel photos. The same people are found in various snapshots, but for the most part their identity remains unknown. Witsen left behind no agendas or diaries for these years, from which one might have ascertained the names of these individuals.

Willem Witsen and George Breitner photographed in a manner that differed from other photographers of their day. They were not part of the photographic tradition and—whether intentionally or not—introduced new perspectives on camera use and drawing with light on the sensitive plate. Remarkably, neither of the two painters were ever in the least drawn to photographic techniques that sought to imitate painting, as aspired to by art photographers. Witsen and Breitner had no intention of their photos resembling anything other than photos. Through their creative desire for experimentation, they discovered the unique capabilities of the photographic medium. Notwithstanding, neither of the two men had any influence on the future development of photography, because their work was never known outside their own private circles. Lodewijk van Deyssel, in his Gedenkschriften (‘Memoirs’), worded Witsen’s significance as a photographer most aptly: ‘Witsen has painted, watercoloured, etched and photographed. I mention this outright, even though the photographic work has never been shown in public, because the photographs he took are the most beautiful that one can see, and because these photographs affirm, more than any others, that as long as a photographer was not allowed to be an artist, an artist is then indeed the best photographer.’

Documentation