Abraham Hulk
Tall Ships
(Dutch, 1813 - 1897)
Oil on panel, 5 x 11 inches (with frame: 11 1/2 x 18 inches)
Signed: Lower right "A. Hulk"
Abraham Hulk Senior was born on the 1st of May 1813 in London.
He was an Anglo Dutch painter, drawer and lithograph.
Hulk came out of an artistic family, his brother Johannes Frederik Hulk Senior (1829–1911) and his sons Willem Frederik Hulk (1852 – c. 1880), Johannes Frederik Hulk Junior (1855–1913) and Abraham Hulk Junior (1876–1898) were also artists too. The son of his brother, Johannes Frederik Hulk (1829–1911), who was also called Johannes Frederik Hulk (1855–1913) was also a painter.
Abraham Hulk Senior became one of the well known marine painters of his time in the 19th century and with that the patriarch of a whole family of Anglo Dutch painters. He studied first to paint portraits under the portrait painter, Jean Augustin Daiwaille (1786–1850) and after that at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam.
Hulk was the teacher not only to his brother Johannes Frederik but to most of his family members and also to the painter Adrianus David Hilleveld. Abraham Senior married Maria Wilhelmina van der Meulen. There is a similarity between this Hulk family of painters and the Dommersen family of Dutch painters like Pieter Cornelis Dommersen and his son William Raymond Dommersen who also settled in England from the Netherlands and were also all marine painters.
He died on the 23rd of March in 1897 in Zevenaar in the Netherlands.