Dutch Estuary Scene with Shipping

Biography of Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriel ( 1828-1903, Dutch )

Gabriel was born in Amsterdam, the son of the sculptor and painter, Paul Joseph Gabriel. From 1840 until 1843 he was educated at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam, where he was a pupil of Louis Zocher. The following year he went to the German town of Cleves, where Barend Cornelis Koekkoek had founded a drawing academy. Later he returned to the Netherlands and studied with Cornelis Lieste in Haarlem.

In 1853 Gabriel moved to Oosterbeek, where landscape painter Johannes Bilders had gathered around him many young painters. The members of this group would later become central figures in the Hague School. Gabriel was also influenced by the painters of the Barbizon School. Gabriel’s paintings stand out from the ‘grey tones’ for which the Hague School was famous because of his clear use of color.

From 1862 onwards, Gabriel regularly embarked on study trips around the Netherlands: first to Arnhem and Oosterbeek, in 1866 to Veenendaal, in the seventies to Abcoude and Vreeland, and from 1875 to the lakes around Nieuwkoop. He settled in Scheveningen, where he bought a house next to his student Geesje Mesdag-van Calcar.

Museums purchased some of his important pieces, including ‘The Pottery in Kampen’, purchased by the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag in 1890.

Gabriel died 23 August 1903 in his home in Scheveningen.

View All Works