Antonie L. Koster (1859-1937) Dutch, Tulip Fields Landscape Oil on Canvas. Likely displays a particularly lush and famous garden space and the facilities on it in Overveen, North Holland. Signed bottom right. 

Condition: Chips to the paint throughout. Commensurate with age. 

Overall Size: 26 1/2 x 37 1/2 in. 

Sight Size: 20 1/2 x 31 1/2 in. 

#6820 . 

Antonie Lodewijk Koster (often abbreviated to A. L. Koster and sometimes referred to as Anthonie Louis Koster) was born on August 8th, 1859 in Temeuzen in the province of Zeeland in The Netherlands. As a child he showed proficiency in drawing and was apprenticed to a sign painter for a brief period. He was first taught by C. Gerritsen, a drawing teacher at the Hogereburgerschool in The Hague. He then became a student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague until 1883. He received etching lessons from Charles Louis Philippe Zilcken and was later advised by Gerke Henkes and Hendrik Willem Mesdag. He lived and worked in The Hague (Scheveningen) for much of the 1880s, although he traveled extensively through the Pyrenees, Rijswijk (Zuid-Holland), and Limburg for inspiration. From 1881 onward he took part in annual exhibitions in Amsterdam, Arnhem, Rotterdam, and The Hague, and although his works found an audience outside the country in his lifetime he rarely traveled to any other part of Europe, preferring the light and colors of his home region and often painting the same view multiple times until he was satisfied with his interpretation of it. He became a member of the Pulchri Studio in The Hague and later joined the Art be us Doel in Haarlem and Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam. He held no formal home throughout the 1890s, seeking to paint and live in the open, although he survived (comfortably) on the sales of his paintings, and lived in various places in Haarlem, Gaanderen, Heerenberg, and Heenstede. In the early 1900s he began to suffer some ill health effects, including suffering from exposure during a particularly long winter in 1904, and settled in a home in Haarlem where he returned to paint after seeking out blooming tulip fields and other landscapes, first committing them to memory and in later years to rapid sketches he would draw from in the studio. He spent the final thirty years of his life there, painting daily until his death on May 28th, 1937.

Chips to the paint throughout. Commensurate with age.