Jan Wingen

Jan Wingen was a Dutch draftsman and painter. Until the 1930s, he owned a business that produced wall paintings on buildings in Maastricht, for example advertising car brands such as Ford. He also sometimes decorated the interior walls of houses. During the First World War Wingen discovered a procedure to make paint without the normally used materials for paint that were now not available because of the war; he used this paint for these ornamental paintings. In 1935 he moved to Den Hague and from 1935 on, he made paintings of landscapes and cityscapes, in impressionist style. He often was called the ‘grey painter’, because he was colour-blind, resulting in mostly grey colour schemes in his paintings. During the Second World War Wingen became a member of the Reichskulturkammer; a government agency in Nazi Germany. According to him this was the only way that he could keep painting. For a short period, Wingen has painted under the pseudonym ‘Leontine’, which was the name of his wife. These paintings were portraits, not in his usual style.