Jan Bogaerts was born in Den Bosch, where he became a student of the symbolist painter Antoon van Welie (1866-1956) at the local Arts Academy. From 1899 on, Bogaerts continued his arts education at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp. In 1903, he returned to Den Bosch, continuing in the symbolist and art nouveau style fashionable in Belgium at the time. From 1906 until 1918, Bogaerts lived and worked around Teteringen, near Breda, specializing in still lifes, a genre he became most known for. The majority of still lifes came into existence in Wassenaar, where Bogaerts settled in 1922 and remained until his death in 1962.

Visiting his cousin, the writer Marie Koenen, in 1903 in Maastricht, Bogaerts asked to be shown around the medieval sites.[1] For a while, Bogaerts lived in Kanne, south of Maastricht, inspired by the rolling landscape and surviving fortresses. The dilapidated seventeenth century terraced castle, now known as Château Neercanne, inspired both the writer and the artist. Named De Witte Burcht or The White Castle, after it’s light-colored marlstone, the site became both their muse. Marie Koenen’s first publication is named De Witte Burcht (1912); the cover adorned by Bogaerts’ illustration of the castle. Although barely visible in the distance, the present drawing, dated 1904, is named after same white citadel. This dreamy and mysterious picture epitomizes Bogaerts ability to capture an imaginary and stylized habitat for its elongated protagonist, dressed in medieval attire, longing for the pale castle across the valley. Rejecting nineteenth century realism, the hazy moonlit scenery is steeped in mystical symbolism of which there are few examples in Dutch art.

[1] A. Gorissen, De abdis en de zwerver. Marie Coenen en Felix Rutten en hun huwelijksjaren in Geulle, Venlo 2005, pp. 20-21