JOHAN
KELLER
THE Master of Sculpture at the Glasgow School of art was born at The Hague in
1863. His father was a highly popular Dutch novelist, and of the six children
Johan from the first threatened to be the most restless and least easily
satisfied with the ordinary currents of life. When he was thirteen his father
was asked, to his delight, to remove him from school, where most of his work
seemed to consist of penalties. He showed, however, a taste for drawing, and on
seeing a sculptor at work in the town of Arnhem, where he lived, had decided to
adopt this profession. After two years with this local artist, who was great in
theories, smoked endless tobacco, and engaged in endless arguments with his
pupil, and four years at the Art School in Amsterdam under Professor Alebe,
whose constant insistence on drawing disgusted him, he passed in 1883 to
Brussels to study under Professors Van de Stappen and Julian Dillens. From the
latter he got his proper training. At the same time he became a member of a
society of young artists, and being able, through his father's liberality, to
have a small studio of his own, exhibited various small figures and busts at
their annual shows.
In 1887, by advice of his friend and master, Dillens, he went to Florence,
became devoted to the masters of the Italian Renaissance, made acquaintance with
the picked art students of Europe, and worked with the utmost enthusiasm. There
he produced his statue of Veritas, a young woman looking into a well, which was
first exhibited in Ghent and afterwards obtained a gold medal at the Fine Art
Exhibition in Amsterdam.
After two years spent in absorbing art influences in Florence, Naples, and other
Italian towns, he returned to settle at The Hague. He was full of ambition and
hope, received the warmest reception from the leading artists of the little
coterie there, and would have been entirely happy had he not tasted the
atmosphere of greater art centres abroad, where sculpture was more appreciated.
It was in vain, however, that he tried to interest the public there in
sculpture, and at last he finished the work in hand - a sandstone statue for the
Museum Boymans - sold his furniture, smashed his studies, and against everyone's
advice, with blouse and tools and very little money, set off for Paris.
There he was happy, and among his artistic acquaintance found some in a position
to employ his services -one in connection with a museum of waxworks, and another
upon important commissions for New York. He earned fair wages and gained much
experience. In the spring of 1896 he exhibited in the Salon, and as his
prospects looked well he married the girl to whom he had been betrothed at The
Hague.
Then one day he was asked if he would like to go to England, to teach modelling
in an art school, in the Midlands. Beautiful prospects were held out - a free
studio, plenty of work, and a salary; and he accepted the offer. But after a
year he found he had never been worse cheated in his life, and deplored the day
he left Paris. He had made up his mind to settle among the Chelsea artists,
whose acquaintance he had made on several visits to London, when he received an
offer, which he accepted, to go to Glasgow, from the Governors of the School of
Art there.
Here he had a very hospitable reception, and at once got a valuable connection
with fair opportunities to obtain a position among his brother artists. Besides
a great deal of architectural decoration for some of the leading Glasgow
architects, he obtained by competition the commission for one of the symbolical
figures on the art Galleries, and shortly afterwards that for the bronze statue
of Dr. Gorman in Rutherglen. His principal decorative work is to be seen on the
addition to the British Linen Bank building at the corner of Queen Street and
Ingram Street; and his portrait busts and medallions have been exhibited in all
the Glasgow exhibitions. His first exhibit in the Royal Academy was the bronze
bust of Professor Cleland in 1906, and it was followed in 1907 by a fantasy,
"The Tiger-Lilies," afterwards in the Walker Gallery at Liverpool. He is now
occupied with the symbolical figure of Wisdom for the new Mitchell Library, and
has received a commission from the surgical staff of the Royal Infirmary for a
medallion of Lord Lister. A vast number of students have passed through his
hands in the School of Art, and among those who have done much credit, one has
since obtained the gold medal at the Royal Academy School, and others are now
successful sculptors in various parts of the kingdom.
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Index of Glasgow Men (1909)