Romantic Dutch painter, drawer and lithographer. He is known for his intimate portraits and genre works.
He was the fourth child of the Baptist merchant Richard Bisschop (4 May 1792, Leeuwarden – 18 April 1845, Leeuwarden) and Sara Soeting (25 April 1800, Leeuwarden – 30 November 1866, Den Haag), who married on 10 June 1818 in Leeuwarden. They got eight children of which only he and his brother Eelco Cuperus reached adult age: Eelke Cuperus (1819-1824), Grietiena Anna Bavinge (1822-1826), Eelco Cuperus (1825-1895), Christoffel (1828-1904), Neeltje Vink (1830-1840), Barent (1833-1834), Grietiena Anna Bavinge (1835-1851) and Barend (1840-1841).
At young age he got painting lessons from Hendik Schaaff (26 January 1805, Leeuwarden – 26 June 1850, Leeuwarden). At age 18 he moved to the city of light of his admired 17th century predecessor Johannes Vermeer, Delft, where he took painting lessons from the painter and lithographer Willem Hendrik Schmidt. Then he went to the art academy in Den Haag to study under Huibertus van Hove (13 May 1814, Den Haag – 14 November 1864 or 1865, Antwerp). After that, he went to Paris to study under the Swiss painting master Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre (2 May 1806, Chevilly – 5 May 1874, Paris). Gleyre was also the teacher of the young Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and James Abbott McNeill Whistler and had knowledge of mythology.
On 26 January 1869 he married in Kensington his student and painter Catherine Seaton Forman “Kate” Swift(6 April 1834, Londen – 16 May 1928, Scheveningen). They lived in Leeuwarden and the land house “Frisia” in Scheveningen. Villa “Frisia” was decorated in precious 17th age style.
Bisschop died on 5 October 1904 in Scheveningen. Kate Bisschop-Swift died 16 May 1928 in Scheveningen. After her death the Frisian Museum in Leeuwarden got the jewellery Kate Bisschop-Swift got in exchange for the portraits she made of European royal families. It and their collection of antique folk art is exposed in the Bisschop room.
Link to Dutch Wikipedia