Rien Poortvliet

After graduating from secondary school, Rien Poortvliet served in the Royal Dutch Marines. Although he received no formal training in drawing or painting, he then spent fifteen years illustrating for an advertising agency and also illustrated children's books and German hunting magazines. He produced calendars for seventeen years and published almost a dozen books, some of which he wrote with writer Wil Huygen. One of his publications, Gnomes (1976), became known worldwide and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Poortvliet painted whatever captured his imagination, including people, animals, gnomes, trolls, and landscapes. He claimed there were no messages in his work; the paintings were simply representations of nature or scenes from his imagination . Using a loose and confident style, Poortvliet worked from real life, memory, or his imagination, but never from photographs. He greatly admired American Robert Abbett and Swede Bruno Liljefors who also painted animals.

"I use my talent to show to people how brilliant a hare can jump, how lovely the dear Lord created evenings and sunsets or blizzards or storms or snow or a roe feeding her fawn. That's my favorite joy."

(Source: McIntosh, Michael. "Rien Poortvliet and the Nature of Nature," Wildlife Art News (September/October 1991): 32-43)