Biography
Lodewijk (Louis) Schelfhout (b. The Hague, Netherlands August 23 1881 – d. Amstelveen, Netherlands November 5 1943) attended the Applied Arts School, Haarlem. In 1900 he spent some time in Germany, employed painting houses and playing the piano before returning to the workshop of Theophile de Bock (1851-1904) in Haarlem. Between 1903-13 he stayed in Montparnasse, Paris and associated with the artists Piet Mondrian, Conrad Kickert (with whom he co-founded the Moderne Kunstkring, Amsterdam in 1910), Peter Alma, Jacoba van Heemskerck, Henri Le Fauconnier, Auguste Herbin, Fernand Léger and Albert Gleizes. He was initially influenced by Cubism (the Singer Museum in Laren held an exhibition of this work in 2018). After his marriage to the philosopher Albertine van der Meulen in 1914 he settled in Hilversum. Schelfhout was also a ceramist, goldsmith, glass painter, furniture designer and a graphic artist in drypoints. He started producing more symbolist and religious work and became a Roman Catholic in 1927.
