The watercolorist Rudolf de Bruyn Ouboter was once characterized by his friend, contemporary and fellow painter Kees Verwey as the 'prince of watercolorists'. A statement that speaks for itself.
De Bruyn Ouboter was born on July 7, 1894 in Hulst. He later moves to The Hague where he apprentices with Bernard Schregel. He also visits the Bik en Vaandrager drawing school. He spends his evenings drawing figures in Pulchri Studio. In 1922 he went to Munich where he became a student of the painter Walther Thor. Two years later he married Margot Mazel and that same year the young couple left for Paris. They stay there for a year in the Rue Gay Lussac, from where de Bruyn Ouboter visits the Parisian academy La Grande Choumière. After Paris, another year abroad follows: Italy Rudolf and Margot move into the old villa of a painter friend, near Florence. But De Bruyn Ouboter does not like the bright southern light. The gray, Dutch atmosphere appeals to him more and within a year he returns to the Netherlands permanently. Back in The Hague, he takes classes at the Hague Academy for another three years.
Around 1931, De Bruyn Ouboter made an important discovery: he made a composition of a small orange tree and a pewter plate. He uses.... watercolor paint. The result is so convincing that returning to oil paint is no longer possible from that moment on.
De Bruyn Ouboter spent the rest of his life working on watercolours. Characteristic of his work is the transparent lightness with which he painted his subjects. These were usually matters that were literally and figuratively close to him. Objects in and around the house such as flowers, glassware, his mother's dolls and the antique chest of drawers. But also things that his son and friends brought him from the nearby beach or sometimes from distant travels. His oeuvre also includes several portraits of his wife, children and some close friends. Light plays a major role in all his paintings. The watercolors often give the impression that they were created as lightly as the light-hearted and unaffected result suggests. The opposite is true; De Bruyn Ouboter has always created his watercolors with the greatest effort. He also questioned the result again and again. He sometimes said: 'Why I started it is still a mystery to me, but I just had to.'
