Dutch-American painter who travelled a lot.
He was the youngest son of Joannes Josephus Hubertus Vos (15 December 1819, Maastricht – 13 August 1860, Maastricht) and Anna Josephina van Beneden (23 April 1822, Maastricht – 6 October 1893, Maastricht), who married on 29 May 1844 in Maastricht. The couple had eight children, two of them died early. Hubert was 5 when his father, a merchant and commercial traveller, died. His youngest sister Marie Jeane was just born.
Hubert first established himself as a publisher and bookseller in both Brussels and Maastricht. He sold his businesses to become a painter. He studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels (1870) and with the historical painter Fernand Cormon (24 December 1845 – 20 March 1924, Paris) in Paris (1880-1884). He married Aline Watteau (1881) and got two children: Isolde Vos (1881-1950?) and Marius Vos (1883, Brussel – ).
He exhibited widely in Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels (1885), Dresden and Munich. From 1885 to 1892, he worked in England, where he exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1888 and 1891. He was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists. Vos increasingly aligned himself with academic painting and after winning a gold medal in 1886, he was in Pont-Aven where he gained attention for criticizing the works of Paul Gauguin. He is described at this point as having “long carroty locks ” and wearing a green velvet hat in the style of Rembrandt.
In 1893 he went to Chicago (Illinois), where he served as a Dutch Commissioner to the 1893 Chicago world’s fair. Later that year he solled his London Studio and settled in New York City. In November 1897, Vos met the Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani. He fell in love with one of her ladies-in-waiting, a divorcee — formerly Mrs. Graham — who was the Hawaiian Princess Kaikilani. He proposed three days after meeting her, and swept her off her feet. Their honeymoon was a world tour that included stays in Hawaii and Korea and which ended in Paris in 1900. Together they had a daughter, Marguerite.
n 1905 Hubert Vos took his second and last trip around the world and became the first European painter to paint a portrait of China’s Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi (1835-1908). In Hawaii he had the reputation as a “court painter” and executed a portrait of the powerful Chinese/Hawaiian merchant Chun Afong. He became a knight in the Order of the Double Dragon.
In the late phases of his career, Vos also painted interior scenes and still-life images featuring Japanese porcelains. He moved in high society and attended at least one charity event dressed in Javanese costume. He died of pneumonia, on January 8th 1935 in Newport (Rhode Island).
Link to Wikipedia