Albertus Verhoesen (1806-1881), Two Goats, Oil On Panel, Signed

Albertus Verhoesen (1806-1881), Two Goats, Oil on panel, Signed 11 x 15 cm. (With frame 17 x 20 cm.) the painting would benefit from cleaning. Some old retouches are visible and they are slightly discoloured.

Albertus Verhoesen (Utrecht 1806-1881) is best known for his meticulous paintings of chickens and other poultry. Ducks, roosters, turkeys, chicks in baskets and chickens pecking in the grass. He reached his highest level with this last category, which is also the most famous. His works are characterised by an extremely fine painting technique, combined with great attention to detail. But he also painted cowsheds and landscapes with cows and calves by a river, or goats in a summer meadow. He was apprenticed to the painter Bruno van Straaten, the landscape painter Jan van Ravenswaay and the cattle painter Pieter Gerardus van Os. From 1824 to 1826, Verhoesen was part of the artists' colony in Hilversum. It was probably during these "Hilversum years" that he received lessons from BC Koekkoek, who also lived there at the time. In Amersfoort, Verhoesen worked for almost twenty years as the city's drawing master (director of the local drawing school). He was also an art dealer. In 1853, Verhoesen returned to Utrecht, where he died in 1881. In addition to his paintings, Verhoesen also made some etchings and lithographs. Albertus Verhoesen's works are in the collections of several important museums in the Netherlands, such as the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the Rijksprentenkabinet in Amsterdam.