A clown, an old toy, a dead bird or a barren Spanish landscape: Jan van Heel could turn very different subjects into the starting point for a painting. He was often drawn to things that carried a sense of vulnerability, solitude or melancholy. His way of painting also changed over the years, moving from recognisable figuration towards a freer style in which his Spanish landscapes in particular came increasingly close to abstraction.
Johannes Jacobus (Jan) van Heel (1898–1990) was born in Rotterdam. He attended evening classes in drawing at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and later worked as an art teacher in The Hague.
Cityscapes and, above all, clowns recur frequently in Van Heel’s early work. Paris played an important role during this period. Rather than depicting the bustling city, his Parisian views often show a quieter and sometimes sombre side of Paris. The clown became one of his most recognisable subjects and continued to appear later in his career. Kunstmuseum Den Haag holds, among other works, The Clown from 1941, Townscape in Paris from 1945–1946 and Clown’s Head from 1952.
Following his stay in Paris in 1946–1947, subjects such as old toys and an old classroom also began to appear in his work from the 1950s onwards. Even his sympathy for a dead bird became the inspiration for a painting.
From the mid-1950s onwards, Van Heel travelled frequently to Spain and northern Italy. The Spanish landscape in particular brought about a clear change in his painting. Landscapes were reduced to large shapes and areas, while earthy colours became increasingly important. Reality remained his point of departure, but in these landscapes Van Heel moved ever closer to abstraction.
Van Heel was closely involved in the artistic life of The Hague. He was a member of Pulchri Studio and a co-founder of, among others, Verve and Fugare, two groups that played an important role within the New Hague School.
His work was widely exhibited and is held in several Dutch museum collections, including Kunstmuseum Den Haag, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Van Abbemuseum and Museum Maassluis. At Museum Maassluis, his work forms part of the core collection of Dutch figurative art.
In 2025, Van Heel’s work was once again shown at Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the exhibition The New Hague School – Freedom Above All, which focused on the post-war artistic scene in The Hague.
