(c) by B.C. KOEKKOEK-HAUS. All rights reserved.
Welcome to the B. C. Koekkoek House in Kleve – an Artist´s House of the Romantic Era The B. C. Koekkoek House is a museum dedicated to Dutch Romantic landscape painting, located in the former residence of Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (Middelburg/Zeeland 1803-1862 Kleve), who was celebrated by his contemporaries as the “Prince of Landscape Painters.” Together with the former studio tower “Belvedere” (1843, privately owned) and the garden, the artist´s house, completed in 1848 in the style of the Italian Renaissance, forms a unique ensemble and a special cultural touchpoint between Germany and the Netherlands. The palace, with its contemporary furnishings, exudes the atmosphere of the refined living culture of its time. B. C. Koekkoek came to Kleve in 1834 with his young wife Elise Thérèse, who was also artistically talented and the daughter of his teacher at the Amsterdam Art Academy, Jean Augustin Daiwaille (Cologne 1786-1850 Rotterdam). Together, they had five daughters. As a painter, B. C. Koekkoek was drawn to nature, which he regarded as the sole true teacher. In the spa town of Cleve, built on hills, he found plenty of charming landscape motifs and an international clientele. From here, he traveled to the Rhine and its tributaries, the Maas, and the Central Uplands to gather material for his paintings, which he later composed in his studio. From Kleve, he supplied exhibition salons in Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and elsewhere. High-ranking clients, such as the Dutch and Prussian royal families and the Russian Tsar, appreciated his work, and his mastery brought him material prosperity. After suffering a stroke and several years of illness, he died in 1862, and his widow sold the house and its contents. In 1841, Koekkoek founded a “Drawing Academy“ in Kleve. The approximately twenty Dutch painter colleagues and students who formed a circle around Koekkoek in Kleve have gone down in Dutch art history as the so-called “Klever Romantics”. Many of these painters are represented with their works today in the B. C. Koekkoek House, in the city where they found their inspiration and which they immortalized in numerous paintings. Barend Cornelis Koekkoek came from a Zeeland painter dynasty. Thus, the house´s collection includes numerous works from several generations of the Koekkoek family, in addition to the works of the Klever Romantics. From 1960 to 1997, the B. C. Koekkoek House housed the Museum of the City of Kleve. Since 1997, a foundation established on the initiative of the Friends of the Museum Kurhaus and Koekkoek House Kleve has been responsible for this architectural gem, which is one of the few buildings that survived the destruction of Kleve during World War II.