As a young child Jacob (Jaap) Dooijewaard was always hanging around his father’s workshop, grinding colours and doing small tasks, developing an early interest in the profession of painting. After having finished his artistic studies in Amsterdam he began recording his impressions of the city, the Amsterdam canals, the streets and the grey skies hanging over the town, using a dash and spontaneous brushstroke.

His move to Laren in 1903 meant a shift to painting mainly interiors. The striking feature in Dooijewaard’s interiors is often the contrast between the homely roughness and ponderousness of the furniture and rafters on the one hand, and the details of pottery and the sheen of brass and pewter on the other. In these contrasts he often closely approached his ideal of a compromise between truthful representation of form and spontaneous impressionism.

Besides Laren Dooijewaard would paint in Nunspeet, Overijssel, Brabant and Limburg. He also travelled to Norway, America, Spain and the southern part of France. He visited Norway every summer, finding new inspiration in the different brighter light to capture his impressions. Dooijewaard would look for new mediums to portray his experiences and pointillist techniques should offer him natural possibilities in this new environment, however only applying it when he thought it consistent with his subject. His palette had become lighter under the influence of the climate and the different light, the heavy warm colours of the Low Countries giving way to soft, cool and serene hues.  

H.H. van Calcar, In het atelier van den schilder. Bezoeken bij Nederlandsche beeldende kunstenaars van dezen tijd, part I, Amsterdam 1941, p. 37-44;
Jan P. Koenraads, De Gebroeders Jacon en Willem Dooijewaard, 1966;
K. Roodenburg, Kunstenaars op de Noordwest Veluwe. Een speurtocht..., Publication Stichting Veluws Museum, Harderwijk 1992, p. 157-165;
K. Beumer, De Singers en de Dooijewaards. De geschiedenis van een vriendschap, Zwolle 1999;
C. Denninger-Schreuder, Schilders van Laren, Bussum 2003, p. 44.