Portret van Michiel Elgersma

About this artwork

Purchased with the support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds

Art Historical Context

John Greenwood’s 1759 portrait of Michiel Elgersma offers a quietly intimate view of an eighteenth-century sitter. Working on paper, Greenwood used a sensitive, linear approach that emphasizes the subject’s features and expression with economical strokes. The modest scale—roughly the size of a sheet of writing paper—suggests the work may have been intended as a personal keepsake or study rather than a formal commission. Greenwood, an American-born artist who spent several years in Europe, brought a cosmopolitan sensibility to Dutch portraiture at a time when the Netherlands remained a hub of trade and cultural exchange. His choice of paper allowed for a direct, unmediated encounter between artist and sitter, capturing a moment of individual presence amid the broader Enlightenment interest in character and likeness. Acquired with the generous support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds, the drawing now preserves both a personal face and a glimpse of transatlantic artistic connections in the mid-eighteenth century.

About the Artist

John Greenwood · 1959–present

John Greenwood (born 1959) is a contemporary British painter who rose to prominence in the early 1990s as part of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement that transformed the British art scene. Born in Leeds, Yorkshire, Greenwood studied at York College of Arts and Technology, Cheltenham, and the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1990 with multiple prestigious awards. His work, characterized by...