Merchant; art critic, poet; professor at the Amsterdam Rijksacademie, 1876-1889; central figure in the emancipation process of the Roman Catholics of the Netherlands. Alberdingk Thijm received no higher education. He initially went into business. In 1842 he began writing art criticism for De Spectator. He married Wilhelmina Anna Sophia Kerst in 1846. In 1852 he founded the Volks-almanak voor Nederlandse katholieken (The People's Almanac for Dutch Catholics), and in 1855 the Catholic periodical Dietsche Warande.

Director of the Koninklijk Museum (later Rijksmuseum), Amsterdam. He advised the Baltimore collector Robert Gilmor, Jr. on purchases.

Print collector, medical doctor; surgeon. Bierens de Haan was the son of David Bierens de Haan, professor of mathematics and physics at Leiden University, and Johanna Catharina Justina IJssel de Schepper. The young Bierens de Haan attended the Leiden gymnasium and, from 1887 to 1894, he studied medicine at Leiden University. He also received training in hospitals and universities abroad, in particular in Bonn, Vienna, Paris, and London. In those years he began building up his print collection, while visiting the European print rooms.

Director of the Amsterdam Rijksprentenkabinet; connoisseur of drawings and prints. Boon studied art history at Amsterdam University, with professor Ferrand Whaley Hudig (1883-1937), and at the Sorbonne in Paris. He finished his studies at the école du Louvre with a thesis on the relationship between the School of Cologne and Netherlandish painting in the second half of the fifteenth century, Les rapports entre l'école de Cologne et la peinture néerlandaise dans la deuxième moitié du quinzième siècle.

Director of the Mauritshuis museum, 1889-1909, connoisseur and art collector. Bredius was raised in a wealthy family. His father was Johannes Jacobus Bredius a director of a powder factory in Amsterdam. His family collected Chinese porcelain and 17th-century Dutch paintings, which Bredius would build upon. His mother died when he was only ten. Early in his career, he intended to become a concert pianist, but realized after three years of study that he would never become an outstanding musician.

The van Gogh scholar J.-B. de la Faille studied under Bremmer. Independent art educator and adviser; van Gogh and Dutch artists scholar. Bremmer received his primary education at a boarding school in Roermond and attended high school in Leiden, where his parents owned a hotel (Hotel Rijnland). He also took classes with the painter D. L. Kooreman. In 1889 he left school and enrolled at the Teeken- en Schilderacademie (Academy for Drawing and Painting) in The Hague. He quit after one year and together with some friends he rented a studio in Leiden.

Professor of aesthetics and art history (1923-1946) at Nijmegen University. Brom was named after his father, Gerard Bartholomeus Brom, a blacksmith of liturgical objects, who had died before Brom jr. was born. His elder brother, Jan Hendrik, took over his father's firm. Brom, who was raised in a Catholic family, attended the Gymnasium of the Bisschoppelijk College in Roermond. After graduation he began medical studies in 1899 at Utrecht University, but a year later switched to Dutch language and literature.

Modernist art historian; partner with Claes Oldenburg in artworks, 1977-2009. Bruggen's father was a medical doctor who held weekly salons for writers and painters at their home where she and her siblings participated. She studied art history at the Rijks University of Groningen, earning a graduate degree in 1967. Bruggen joined the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam the same year as a curator. She worked with conceptual artists Doug Wheeler, Larry Bell, Jan Dibbets and Ger van Elk, marrying around this time.

Professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam (1961-1985); lead art historian for the Rembrandt Research Project (RRP) catalogue raisonné, part of the Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project. Bruyn studied art history at Utrecht University. In 1948, before he finished his study, he was involved in cataloging old paintings in the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller. In 1950 he was appointed assistant at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, where he helped prepare the 1952 exhibition Drie eeuwen portret in Nederland (Three centuries of portraiture in the Netherlands).

Professor of Archaeology and Ancient History. Byvanck attended the Gymnasium at The Hague, in which city his father, W.G.C. Byvanck (1848-1925), was librarian at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library). Between 1902 and 1907, he studied classics at Leiden University, and he continued his study in Bonn, Germany, in 1907 and 1908. He was particularly interested in the history of the art of antiquity and made trips to Greece, Egypt and Italy.

Director of the Dutch Institute for Art History in Florence; Professor of Art History and Iconology at Utrecht University. Emmens attended the Marnix Gymnasium in Rotterdam. Between 1947 and 1955, he studied art history at Utrecht University where J. G. van Gelder was among his major influences. As a student, he wrote a thesis, Apelles en Apollo, about Dutch poems on seventeenth-century paintings. He became the research assistant for William S.

First author of a Van Gogh catalogue raisonné. De la Faille studied law at Utrecht University and participated in dramatic productions. He earned his doctor's degree in 1913. Instead of working as a lawyer, however, he focused on the contemporary art scene and ethnographic topics, writing for various newspapers and magazines.He also wrote fiction. After reading a 1917 article "Over de literatuur over Van Gogh" (On the literature concerning Van Gogh) by the conservator Herman F. E.

Professor of the History of Pre-Classical Antiquity at the University of London, 1949-1954. Frankfort was the eldest son of a Jewish mercantile family. Expected to inherit and run the family business, he was educated at the Hogere Burger School, a commercial high school, instead of the humanities-centered Barlaeus Gymnasium. Friends at the Barlaeus Gymnasium recognized his brilliance, however, and convinced his father to allow him to pursue a university career instead. Frankfurt studied initially Greek at the University of Amsterdam.

Archaeologist and scholar of ancient art. Groenewegen's father, Hermanus Ysbrand Groenewegen (b. 1862), was a minister and professor of theology at a seminary in Leiden and later a professor of philosophy of religion and ethics at the University of Amsterdam. She studied Greek and Chinese philosophy at the University of Amsterdam where she met Henri Frankfort, another ancientist student a year younger than she. The two became engaged in 1920. In 1921 Groenewegen was granted an M. A.

Rembrandt specialist; director Amsterdam Historical Museum. Haak was the son of Jurrian Haak and Henrietta van Eek. He attended the Amsterdam Montessori Lyceum between 1938 and 1944. In 1950 he married Annette van Heek. Between 1950 and 1954, he served as assistant to the art dealer D. A. Hoogendijk in Amsterdam. In 1954 Haak began his museum career as assistant in the department of paintings at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. In 1963, he obtained the position of chief curator at the Amsterdam Historical Museum, of which he was appointed director in 1975.

Art critic; museum director (1947-1963); professor of art history (1952-1968); Van Gogh expert. Hammacher grew up in Middelburg as a sensitive child with strong affinities for music, literature, and painting. He played the violin, painted and drew. In 1917, after graduating from high school, he went to Utrecht to study law, with a view to becoming an attorney, like his uncle and grandfather. One year later, however, he changed his mind and started writing on literature and art.

Museum director; art collector. Hannema was born in Batavia, Indonesia which is present-day Jakarta. After having spent the first five years of his life in the Dutch East Indies, Hannema was raised in The Hague, where his parents had settled. His mother, Hermine Elise de Stuers, brought him in contact with persons who belonged to the artistic circles in The Hague, including Abraham Bredius.

Professor of art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU and Yale University. He moved permanently to the United States in 1959. While a professor at Yale in the 1970s, Haverkamp helped convert a colleague in the economics department, Mike Montias, to study the art markets of the Dutch republic. Haverkamp was named John Langeloth Loeb professor emeritus at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. His students included Ronni Baer, Alan Chong, Stephanie Dickey, Wayne Franits, Thomas Kren, Otto Naumann, Nanette Salomon, Joaneath Spicer and Peter Sutton.

Director of the Municipal Museum The Hague, 1948-1950. Hefting attended the Gymnasium in Utrecht. Being in poor health, she left this school prematurely for a cure in Switzerland. She returned to the Netherlands to attend a school for social work in Amsterdam, but when she graduated at age 21, she still was too young for being employed in this sector. She was appointed assistant librarian at the Institute for Art History at Utrecht University. At the invitation of Professor Willem Vogelsang, she began to attend his classes.

Art historian, art collector, expert and connoisseur; specialized in Dutch seventeenth-century painting. After finishing his Gymnasium education in Coburg, Germany, Hofstede de Groot briefly studied Art History in Leipzig. The death his father, a professor in Groningen, forced Hofstede de Groot to return to Groningen, where he altered his studies to Classics. Later he transferred to Leiden, where he obtained his bachelor's degree.

Art historian and professor in Iconography and Early Christian Art. Hoogewerff attended the Gymnasium in Amersfoort and studied Dutch Language and Literature at the University of Utrecht between 1903 and 1908. In 1912 he received his doctorate, writing his dissertation on Dutch painters working in Italy: Nederlandsche schilders in Italië in de XVIe eeuw. De geschiedenis van het Romanisme. His advisor was Willem Vogelsang, the first full professor in art history in the Netherlands (beginning 1907). Hoogewerff became his assistant in 1908.

painter; student of Rembrandt; wrote an early account of painters in the Netherlands

Art writer, painter, draughtsman, engraver, book illustrator. At the age of nine, Houbraken became an assistant in the shop of the Dordrecht merchant in twine, Johannes de Haan. His patron, being himself trained in painting by Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693), gave the young boy the opportunity to copy drawings and prints. In 1672, Houbraken began his apprenticeship as a painter, first for a short time as a pupil of the landscape painter Willem van Drielenburch (c. 1625-after 1677). In 673-1674, he spent nine months in the studio of the portraitist Jacobus Levecq (1634-1675).

Professor of art history and decorative arts museum curator. Hudig was born in Rotterdam where his father and his brother were members of the shipping firm Hudig and Veder. The young Hudig apprenticed at the firm of Ryley and Company in London. Between 1907 and 1913 he served the Hudig and Veder firm in Amsterdam as proxy holder. Fascinated by art and literature, he left the firm at age 30 to study art history in Berlin. For two years he studied under Adolph Goldschmidt, August Grisebach, and Georg Loeschcke.

Cultural historian (and champion) of the Middle Ages. Huizing's father, Dirk Huizinga, was a professor of physiology. His mother, Jacoba Tonkens, died when Huizinga was only two. As a child, he witnessed the re-enactment of medieval procession in Groningen, which kindled an interest in history. He attended the municipal Gymnasium, intent on studying history, but, the history teachers were so poor that he changed to linguistics, learning Arabic. He entered the University of Groningen in 1891, studying Sanskrit and literature.