Bart Reindersma - realistic etching "botter in Leidsegracht Amsterdam" neatly framed

• Bart Reindersma - he lives on a houseboat in the Vecht near Weesp - is a self-taught artist. In his career as an artist, he specialized in making etchings and heliogravures. This is a technique invented in 1860, in which a photographic image is transferred to a copper plate, which is then converted into an intaglio image using an etching technique. The technique is only used by a few artists worldwide.

Reindersma made a number of etchings of the launching of the lifeboat at the beginning of this century. In June 1999 he had attended a demonstration of the Abraham Fock in Noordwijk and was so impressed by the rattling tires of the vehicle over the cobblestones of the village that he ran alongside the vehicle and followed the transport to the beach. A year later he was on Ameland, where he was given permission to photograph the launch from close by. He made etchings in aquatint from those photos, four of which can be seen on this page. In 2005 Reindersma exhibited in the Maritime Center.
His Ameland work came to the attention of the KNRM. This led to two commissions for gifts to the relatives of two generous donors, thanks to whom the KNRM was able to build two new lifeboats. One was the Anna Margaretha of Ameland station, the second the Janine Parqui of Hoek van Holland station. In both cases, the relatives received the first copy of the etchings that Reindersma had made of the boats.