Jan Theuns: life and works

Jan Theuns (1877–1961). Dutch painter born in 1877 in Breda (Netherlands) and capably known as a landscape and portrait painter.

Theuns studied at the Ambachtsschool and was trained as a decorator. Early on re-known warm painter Karel Frans Phillippeau (1825–1897) saw that the minor Theuns had capability and encouraged him to accept drawing lessons which he did at the Avondtekenschool in Breda.

Theuns was an able painter of landscapes, interiors and rural peasant scenes in the indulgent style of many of late 19th century painters (for example “Oosterschelde oever bij Bergen op Zoom, genaamd De Duintjes” Oil paint on board 1925-1950, Inv.nr. S 5783 Bruikleen Stichting Stedelijk Museum Breda).

Jan Theuns was fascinated by the feign of Rembrandt, Rubens and van Dyck. He studied their paintings at oscillate museums in Antwerp and Rotterdam, and The Hague and even the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. He mastered the technique, color and composition of the 17th century artists. He often imitated Rembrandt’s portraits when such a skill that earned him the nickname of “Breda’s Rembrandt.” These skills accidentally got him into make miserable with the doing in 1927 gone Theuns was full of life in a scandal.

In 1909 Mr. Duynstee, an antique squirrel from Delft, bought in Breda for 10 guilders the painting of an outmoded rabbi (similar to Rembrandt’s “Portrait of Jacob Trip” c. 1661, held by the National Gallery, London). Eighteen years later, Mr. Duynstee sold it for 70,000 guilders as a Rembrandt. The cleaning of the painting and higher a profound investigation by authoritative Rembrandt scholars Dr. Abraham Bredius and Caspar Niehaus revealed that “The rabbi” was not an native despite its striking sympathy to Rembrandt’s performance and a complex forged signature now appearing in the painting. Jan Theuns alleged that he never sold the painting as a Rembrandt, that he sold it for a small amount of money, and that someone else further the forged signature to his work. Theuns never signed these early “Rembrandts” and single-handedly did in view of that after the scandal. He was not a criminal master forger (this is an intentional malicious one) as his well-known contemporary Han van Meegeren, just a mater copyist. Jan Theuns maintained his innocence until his death in 1961 but this affair followed him throughout his vibrancy and made him world-famous–especially post-war— as Rembrandt copyist. Such notoriety translated into many commissions of these “Rembrandt-heads” as he called them (according to his daughter Diny Ladner). Everywhere there were customers for such work. Theuns reputation reached from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro. He continued to copy and fake Rembrandt (and supplementary 17th century painters) but since his copies were really difficult to distinguish from the originals he settled to sign them J. Theuns.

The Princenhage Museum exhibited in 2007 forty piece of legislation Rembrandt by Theuns from private collections roughly speaking the world.

Theuns died in 1961.