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Willem Bartel van der Kooi (1768-1836)
A father's joy. Signed and dated W. B. van der Kooi, faciebat 1816. Canvas, 101 × 111 cm.

Leeuwarden, Fries Museum, inv.nr. 1948-73 (on loan from Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, which acquired it by bequest from L. V. Ledeboer Bz. in 1891, with the following entry).

Academic prizes for excellent young scholars were instituted under the French in 1806. The artist himself was the beneficiary of more substantial rewards during that period, both academic and political. A radical Patriot, he served as secretary of the Frisian county of Achtkarspelen from 1795 to 1800, and from 1798 to 1811 was Lecturer in Drawing at the Franeker Academy. Van der Kooi used his political position, and took personal initiatives, to save local works of art – the tombs of the Nassau stadholders of Friesland and church altarpieces – from iconoclastic depradation.

The choice of subject may not have been van der Kooi's. A father's joy was commissioned in 1816, years after the artist had stopped painting scenes of everyday life, by the Amsterdam collector S.M. de Boer, who had a special attachment to Friesland.

Boschma 1978, cat.nr. E 249.