Floris Verster

Who was Floris Verster?

Floris Hendrik Verster was a Dutch painter.

Verster came from an artistic family. His father, Abraham Florentius Verster van Wulverhorst, was an administrator of the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden and a renowned scholar and painter of birds. His younger brother Cees developed into an art critic and later a curator of the Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden. Hendrik took drawing lessons from Gerardus Johannes Bos and, in the winter of 1878-79, from George Hendrik Breitner when he briefly worked as a lecturer in Leiden. Between 1880 and 1884 Verster continued his training at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague where he counted among his fellow-students George Hendrik Breitner, Isaac Israëls and Willem de Zwart. After graduation, he briefly attended classes at Amedee Bourson in Brussels.

From 1882-1892 he shared a studio in Leiden with his future brother-in-law, the still-life painter Menso Kamerlingh Onnes. Until about 1885 he worked in the style of the Hague School. The next seven years he experimented in still life painting under the influence of his brother-in-law and of French painters Antoine Vollon and Théodule Ribot. As a colorist he excelled, his passionate color vision differing from the current Hague School style.