Jan Frederik Portlieje

Biography of Jan Frederik Portlieje ( 1829-1908 )

Jan Portielje is the tenth of eleven children of Gerrit Portielje bookseller and editor in Amsterdam and Jacoba Zeegers. He studies at the Academy of Amsterdam from 1842 till 1849, and after at the Academy of Antwerp from 1849 till 1852. Between 1851 and 1853, he stays repeatedly for prolonged periods in Paris, especially in summer, during the closure of the Academy. He also visits Germany and France.
He becomes established in Antwerp in 1852, and starts a family there next year. Two of his five children, Edward and Gerard, will also be painters. In 1857 he settles down in Brussels.

Recognized as a portrait painter, he receives commands from the French, Belgian and Dutch aristocracy. He also realizes paintings in association with the painters Frans Lebret and Eugène-Rémi Maes.

He participates regularly in the Exhibition of alive Masters in Amsterdam, The Hague, Groningue and Rotterdam between 1848 and 1888. He is also present in the three-year Fairs of Antwerp in 1852 and 1855. In 1893, an exhibition to the Room Verlat in Antwerp is dedicated to him as well as to his sons Edward and Gerard. In 1894, he exposes in « Old Antwerp », always with his two sons, H. Timmermans and E. Godding.
Jan Portielje worked in close collaboration with art dealers, such as Albert D' Huyvetter and his son Albert Junior in New York, as well as with the Prinz brothers, art dealers settled in Brooklyn and Chicago.

His portraits often show elegant women in garden, in park, or in luxurious inside. He represents them alone or in the presence of their children, occupied with reading or with writing, admiring a drawing, a flower or a jewel. His realistic painting reveals in the detail the bourgeois inside and the big variety of materials, hangings and dresses.