VISSER, Cor

1903 - 1982

Cornelis Visser was born at Spaarndam, North Holland on 26 August 1903, fourth child of Siebe Visser, a water-lock builder, and his wife Alida Francina née Kipperman. He entered the Harlem Academy of Art at the age of fourteen and two years later exhibited his first works in the Amsterdam Museum when the Rijksmuseum purchased two of his works. From 1927 he held exhibitions most years in various towns throughout Holland and Belgium and from these exhibitions the Teyler Museum at Haarlem and the Museum des Beaux Art, Antwerp purchased his works. During this time, he lived aboard a seagoing yacht ‘The Sparvum’ on the Zuider Zee, later to be replaced by a 40ft Dutch clipper ‘The Emmy’. He married on 10 August 1929, Emma Nieuwstad, daughter of Jan Nieuwstad, a master builder. He first sailed to Pin Mill, near Ipswich in 1937 and spent much of his life living in and around Suffolk as a landscape, coastal and portrait artist, exhibiting at Cooling Galleries in 1938. In 1939, he was living aboard the 'Emmy' Yacht off Ferry Quay, Woodbridge, Suffolk and during the Second World War was appointed official war artist to the Dutch Royal Family, then living in exile in London, and where he painted many culturally important portraits of the royal family as well as key exiled government officials and military officers. At the request of Miss Anna Airy, then president of the Ipswich Art Club, elected a member which he retained until his retirement in 1974, when elected a life member. He opened Fore Street Gallery at 44 Fore Street, Ipswich and formed a small group of students who met weekly in his studio. A selection of his work is exhibited in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the Victoria and Albert Museum and The National Portrait Gallery in London. The Ipswich Borough Council's Museums and Galleries Collection also contains a large selection of his paintings. His wife died in 1962, and Cornelis Visser died at 140 Back Hamlet, Ipswich on 27 September 1982. He exhibited at the centenary of the Ipswich Art Club in 1974 a watercolour 'Barges on Pin Mill Hard' and black chalk 'Looking at the Finished Picture' and as a life member exhibited from his studio at 44 Fore Street, Ipswich in 1977 'Portrait Study'. (Anthea Durose in Ipswich Art Club Retrospective Loan Exhibition 1983).

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Works by This Artist