Jacob van Strij

1756 – 1815

Dutch painter, part of a family of painters and draughtsmen. Abraham van Strij I and Jacob van Strij were sons of Leendert van Strij, a painter. Jacob studied with Andreas Lens (1739-1822) a history and figure painter in Antwerp and graduated from the Antwerp Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in 1776. Thereafter he was encouraged by the Amsterdam collector Jan Danser Nijman. On his return to Dordrecht he became a member of the 'Pictura Drawing Society' which had been founded in 1774 by his brother, amongst others. In 1786 Jacob married Magdalene van Rijndorp, by whom he had four children. For a period from 1801 the brothers shared a studio, working together on numerous commissions for the decoration of houses in Dordrecht, such as that of Jacob Vriesendorp, now in the Dordrechts Museum. As fashionable artists of their day, they played a significant part in stimulating a revival of interest in 17th-century Dutch painters, some of whose works provided them with inspiring models for emulation and, on occasion, imitation. Jacob's landscape paintings and drawings were strongly influenced by Cuyp.

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