Jan Altink

Jan Altink was born on 21 October 1885 in Groningen, in the north of the Netherlands, and died there on 6 December 1971, at the age of 86. He trained locally, studying at the Kunstnijverheidsschool, the Groningen school of applied arts, around 1900, then enrolling the same year in the evening course at Academie Minerva, where he won student prizes and medals. He completed a drawing teacher's certificate (M.O.-tekenen) in 1911 and supported himself for a number of years by teaching at drawing and craft schools and by working as a decorative painter.

In May 1918, Altink was one of the founders of De Ploeg (The Plough), the Groningen artists' association, and he is credited with proposing the group's name. He remained an active painter throughout his life, working outdoors alongside fellow De Ploeg members to render the flat farmland, hay harvests, and wide skies of the province of Groningen in a dense, expressionist palette. In 1939 his work was included in Onze Kunst van Heden (Our Art of Today) at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The Groninger Museum organized the first retrospective of his work on the occasion of his 75th birthday in 1960. He continued painting until his death in 1971. The Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem mounted a major retrospective devoted to him shortly after his death.

Altink's reputation is built on his role as a De Ploeg founder and on the regional specificity of his subject matter. Christie's, as quoted on his Wikipedia biography, has described him as "widely regarded as the purest 'Groninger' of all Ploeg artists," though the exact date of that assessment is not documented in the sources reviewed. His inclusion in the Rijksmuseum's 1939 Onze Kunst van Heden exhibition, and the Groninger Museum's decision to give him a retrospective on his 75th birthday, point to sustained institutional regard within the Netherlands across his lifetime and after his death.

Altink's market is small, regional, and thin by auction-volume standards next to his De Ploeg contemporaries. A single market source, MutualArt, cites a realized price of up to USD 127,629 for a painting, the highest recorded figure identified for the artist, though the specific work, auction house, and sale date could not be independently confirmed and should be treated as provisional. His works, mostly paintings, watercolors, and drawings, circulate today mainly through Dutch regional dealers such as Simonis & Buunk and Mark Smit Fine Art rather than through international blue-chip galleries or auction houses. There is no confirmed catalogue raisonne; a biographical monograph exists, and the Groninger Museum functions as the closest thing to an institutional authority on his oeuvre.

Altink's market is regional and comparatively illiquid: recorded auction results are limited, and the widely cited auction high of USD 127,629 traces to a single market source that does not identify the specific work, auction house, or sale date, so it should be treated with some caution. There is no catalogue raisonne, so provenance and verification through established Dutch dealers or the Groninger Museum's records carry particular weight.