OS, Pieter Gerardus van

Dutch painter and etcher, part of a family of painters, son of Jan van Os. He studied with his father and from 1794 to 1795 at the Tekenakademie in The Hague. During this period he copied paintings from the collection of Willem V, including Paulus Potter’s Young Bull (1647; The Hague, Mauritshuis). After completing his training, he departed for Amsterdam, where he supported himself primarily by painting rather mediocre portrait miniatures and giving drawing lessons.

Around 1805 he began to devote himself to producing landscape paintings filled with cattle and initially still strongly indebted to the 17th-century Dutch masters (e.g. Ox and Sheep, 1806; The Hague, Museum Bredius). In 1808, his Hilly Landscape with Cattle (untraced) won the prize provided by Louis Napoleon for the best landscape at the first public exhibition of Dutch contemporary art in Amsterdam. Potter’s Young Bull was still his most important model at this time, as witnessed by his attempts at life-size paintings of animals, for example Cow and Calf and Sheep (both c. 1810; The Hague, Gemeentemuseum).

During the early years of the 19th century, Pieter had a studio in Amsterdam and among his most notable students were Wouterus Verschuur (1812-1874), Simon van den Berg (1812-1891), Guillaume Anne van der Brugghen (1811-1891) and Jan van Ravenzwaay (1789-1869). In 1808 he had a son, Pieter Frederik (1808-1892), who would continue the Dutch landscape tradition through the end of the 19th century, not only through his own work, but through the work of his most important pupils - Anton Mauve and Johannes Hubertus Leonardus de Haas (1832-1908).

Pieter continued to work until his death in The Hague on March 28, 1839.

The Van Os family’s contributions to Dutch 19th century art cannot be overstated; through their landscape and still-life works, they furthered the development of these great Dutch traditions and paved the way, through their teachings, for the new techniques and styles that would emerge.