Louis Haver is my favourite Dutch printmaker. Not very well known abroad (as today is his colleague Arie Zonneveld) but a very nice artist with quite a prolific output. I like to describe him as the Dutch Emil Pottner. Over the years I managed to collect most of his prints, over 80 different. I suppose only a few have escaped my attention or efforts bringing them all together. In some unexplained and hard to believe lucky encounters I also managed to retrieve and acquire some 40 sets of the surviving blocks and restored them to functionality. Everything had become separated after estate, house and studio clearing sales. The many blocks illustrate how the artist methodically build up his designs and usually used a key woodblock and just 2 or  3 linoleum colour blocks. 

Together they show what a self taught printmaker (he was no amateur and had to make a living with his production) can achieve. I like the charming bird prints most, they show he was an outdoor man and a keen observer, and also his impressions of the tidal “Waddenzee”, my home, its horizons, the mudflats, the seasons and countless migrating birds.

Louis Haver proves you have not to go far from home to find satisfaction and inspiration enough for a lifetime of artistic production. So did Emil Pottner, Friederich Lissmann and Marlies Meinshausen-Felsing by the way……..