'Working in the harbour by night'
Pastel, 60 x 40 cm
Signed: lower right 'heijenbrock'
Herman Heijenbrock (1871-1948)
'Painter of light and work' he is called. Herman Heijenbrock is fascinated by drudging workers in iron and steel foundries, glass, light bulbs and pottery factories, shipyards and
coal mines, which he paints in oil or - more often - in pastels. His works shows beautiful images of glowing fire, that makes the faces of the workers a bit spooky and is so realistic
that you can almost hear and feel the pounding of the machines.
Accompanied by his small folding drawing board, that he can drop anywhere, the painter travels to industrial areas in Belgium, Germany, England and Sweden. Also the bustling atmosphere
on dusky harbor quays, where manpower still plays a major role, he lays solid, such as shown on this pastel.
Herman Heijenbrock has experimented extensively to find a satisfactory way of painting in industrial environments with a lot of fine dust and smuts.
The solution he found by chance in a drugstore in England, where they sell black paper. Since then he has worked in dusty, smoky work situations invariably with colored chalk on black papers.
The fascination of industrial painter Heijenbrock - educated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam - is double. On the one hand he is struck by the miserable lives of the workers, but
on the other hand, is that for him also a truly inexhaustible source of inspiration for a series of impressive paintings, to which he owes his fame. Inter alia the Open Air Museum in Arnhem
and the Gemeentemuseum Helmond purchase some of his paintings. Through his works we today get a realistic picture of the labour class during the industrial revolution.
