The buyer quickly got the hang of it. A painting that started at an auction in Hilversum at 150 euros and for which he eventually paid 13,000 euros turned out to be the work of the Groningen Ploeg painter Jan Altink. And is worth much more.
The painting was made along the Reitdiep, on the north side of the city. The buyer is lawyer/art dealer Mark Smit from Ommen. Immediately after he was allowed to call himself the owner, he called Richard ter Borg, a gallery owner in Groningen and an expert on De Ploeg.
Painted on awning canvas by Bossinade
Ter Borg: ,,Smit’s assessment was correct, I knew that immediately when I saw the painting. It’s an altink. Painted on awning canvas. At the time, he got that for free from Bossinade in the city.” It was an art supply store.
That awning background was also the confirmation for Smit at the auction. “I was already quite sure of my case, but when I recognized that striped cloth on the back, I doubted even less.” Further research, carried out together with Ter Borg, confirmed his point. Smit studied law in Groningen in the 1990s. There his interest in art was born, and especially in De Ploeg. “Unique work.”
You are sometimes wrong, as an art historian
A message about a painting that may have struck a blow at auction house Van Spengen made the front page of De Telegraaf on Wednesday. The maker of the painting and the buyer remained unknown. And not everyone was convinced of that ‘blow’. Art historian Carole Denninger rather thought of it as ‘an amateur work’.
Smit: ,,I trade in Ploegwerk and recognized this as a painting from 1927. Altink was influenced in that year by fellow Ploeglid Job Hansen. He then painted in a somewhat rarer way.” Ter Borg: ,,Altink took a more impressionistic approach. In that year he gave away quite a few paintings for free to colleague Jan Wiegers. Everything on awning fabric. He apparently got a whole part out of that.”
No signature, but that means nothing at De Ploeg
What helped Smit is that the painting was not signed. As a result, only the real connoisseur could strike. Yet he still had to bid heavily against another candidate, with either less money or less certainty. Ter Borg: ,,Because of the lack of a signature, others may have thought that it was not a ‘real’ painting. But Ploeg painters often did not sign. They regarded the work itself as their signature.”
Smit liked the authenticity check together with Ter Borg. “I know him as a great connoisseur. He was also able to indicate the location of the painting to me. Ter Borg: “Altink made this opposite the Blauwbörgje, facing towards the city.”
It can first be seen in Belvédère, Oranjewoud.
De Groninger estimates the value at around 40,000 euros. “It is key work.” Smith is all about having fun. “It is wonderful to find such a painting. It is now at my restorer in the Randstad, it is very dirty, so it will be well refurbished. Then I will see what I do with it.”
The first step after the restoration is now clear. Ter Borg: “The Altink will be exhibited first at Belvédère.” A logical place, this museum in Oranjewoud. After all, Han Steenbruggen is director there, that other great connoisseur of De Ploeg in the Northern Netherlands.