Pieter Van Veen (1875 – 1961)
Interior of Chartres Cathedral, 1927
Oil on canvas

29”h x 24”w
Early 18th Century French Frame
Exhibited at the Smithsonian in 1928
From a Cincinnati Estate
Mint Condition

A plein air landscape painter, Pieter Van Veen traveled and painted in Europe, New England and the American West, having emigrated from Holland to New York City.

He was born in The Hague, Holland, studied there at the Royal Academy of the Arts, and then spent a decade in France, some of the time in Barbizon, studying with Henri Harpignies. In 1929, he earned the Cross of Legion from the French Government for a series of oil paintings of Cathedrals of France, of which (28) of these paintings were exhibited at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC in 1928 (of which our painting is an actual example of).

In 1915, he settled in New York City but traveled extensively including to France and to artist colonies in Connecticut where he painted his first American “plein aire” landscapes. He became a member of the Salmagundi Club, the National Arts Club, and the New York Municipal Arts Society.

In 1916, he went West, hired by the Great Northern Railroad to record the expanded territory, and in the 1920s, he painted the Mission of San Juan Capistrano by royal command of the Queen of Belgium. In the 1930s, he was painting at the Grand Canyon, and in his later years, he turned to flower painting. He eventually settled in the Puget Sound region of the Pacific Northwest, and interpreted that glorious landscape in his classic post-impressionist style of mid 1930s onward.

His work is in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen of Belgium, the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, the H.C. Henry Collection at Washington University in Seattle, and the Butler Art Institute in Youngstown, Ohio.