Charles Leickert

Charles Henri Joseph Leickert was born on 22 September 1816 in Brussels, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, and is variously described in market sources as Belgian or Dutch, reflecting a career spent almost entirely in the Netherlands. He enrolled at the Hague Drawing Academy in 1827 and won a First Prize in the Third Class there in 1834.

His early teacher was Bartholomeus van Hove, whose Academy classes and studio shaped Leickert's drawing and command of light. In the mid-1830s he continued his training in the studio of Wijnand Nuijen, whose picturesque, detail-rich townscapes influenced Leickert's own compositions, and from 1839, after Nuijen's death, he studied under Andreas Schelfhout, the landscape painter most associated with Dutch winter scenes and generally cited as his most influential teacher.

Leickert built his career first in The Hague before moving to Amsterdam around 1849, where he joined the artists' society Arti et Amicitiae, and in 1856 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Amsterdam. Gallery biographies estimate that he produced roughly 700 paintings over his career, of which about 85 were exhibited during his lifetime, including showings in Amsterdam in 1836, Rotterdam in 1850, and recorded appearances in Brussels, at the Paris Salon, and at the Royal Academy in London; exact years for the latter three are not documented in available sources, and these gallery-sourced production and exhibition figures have not been independently cross-verified. Late in life, at about age 71, he moved to Mainz, Germany, where he died on 5 December 1907.

Gallery and market sources describe Leickert as praised in his lifetime for his winter light effects and for developing his own eye beyond the direct influence of his teacher Schelfhout, though specific, independently verifiable contemporary reviews were not located in available sources, so no direct quotations are reproduced here. There is no record in available sources of a major museum retrospective; his standing today rests on steady museum representation across the Netherlands and Europe and on consistent demand in the European auction market rather than on critical reappraisal.

Leickert's market is active but modest in scale, with paintings appearing regularly at European auction houses including Lempertz, Dorotheum, Christie's, and Bonhams, most often in the range of roughly EUR 10,000 to EUR 95,000 depending on subject and condition. The highest price identified in available sources is EUR 132,250 for the painting At the koek en zopie in a panoramic winter landscape, reported as sold in October 2007. The auction house and exact sale date for that result are not confirmed in the sources reviewed, so this figure should be treated as the best available estimate rather than a fully documented record. A Bonhams press release separately advertised another Leickert work, View on the Ij with Amsterdam in the background, with a pre-sale estimate of GBP 180,000 to 220,000, which suggests the true auction ceiling may run higher, though the realized price for that lot is not confirmed in available sources. His winter skating scenes and city views on frozen canals, the subjects he learned from Schelfhout and Nuijen, tend to be the most consistently sought works.

No catalogue raisonne has been confirmed for Leickert, and there is no documented estate archive or authentication body, so attribution generally depends on gallery and auction-house expertise and comparison against signed, dated works in museum collections. His lifetime output is estimated by gallery biographies at around 700 paintings, a figure not independently cross-verified here, which if accurate would mean supply at auction is comparatively steady rather than scarce; prices vary widely by subject matter and condition. The widely cited top price of EUR 132,250 for a 2007 sale lacks a confirmed auction house and exact date in the sources available, and a separate Bonhams pre-sale estimate of GBP 180,000 to 220,000 for another work suggests the true record may be higher, so the EUR 132,250 figure should be treated as indicative rather than fully verified. Several dealers, including Rehs Galleries, Simonis & Buunk, and Kunsthandel Bies, currently offer his work, but none of these constitutes a formal estate representation.