Although trained in his father's profession of lithography, Bernardus Johannes Blommers turned to painting and studied at the Drawing Academy in the Hague. His first major success was a painting exhibited prominently at the Triennial Exhibition in Amsterdam in 1865. Blommers is considered a member of the Hague School, which was led by his friends Willem Maris (1844-1910) and Josef Israels (1824-1911), older artists whose styles and choice of subjects-everyday scenes in the lives of peasants, fishermen, and their families--greatly influenced his art. Blommers often painted children, most appealingly in his later works, which were more broadly painted than his earlier, cabinet-sized pictures. Blommers's work sold well and was especially popular in England, Scotland, and the United States, where he visited the Philadelphia artist Edward Taylor Snow (1844-1913) and sat for Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), who executed a bust-length portrait in 1904 (Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio).

Biography courtesy of Schwarz Gallery, www.antiquesandfineart.com/schwarzphila