Gerrit Paape [SEP] native language
Gerrit Paape
Gerrit Paape (Delft, 4 February 1752 – The Hague, 7 December 1803) was a Dutch "plateelschilder" (painter of earthenware and stoneware), poet, journalist, novelist, judge, columnist and (at the end of his career) ministerial civil servant.
Life.
Gerrit Paape was born to a poor couple with many children. Because he wanted to draw well, his father had him placed in a local earthenware factory in 1765, where he learned the trade of the "plateelschilder
Paape was plagued by illnesses that consigned him to his bed. He died of edema at the Hague at the age of 51.
Works.
Paape wrote numerous books and plays, mostly romanticised accounts of an exile's life in the southern Netherlands and France, based on real events and facts. Gerrit Paape edited "Reize door de Oostenrijkse Nederlanden" ("A Journey through the Austrian [i.e. Southern] Netherlands"). The exiles in the castle of Watten (in French Flanders) also figure in his novel