Els_Noordhof

Els Noordhof

Els Noordhof

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Elisabeth Johanna Noordhof (24 February 1924 – 7 March 2013), known as Els Noordhof or Els Noordhof-Smith, was a Dutch-born portrait artist and book illustrator.

Quick Facts Born, Died ...

Early life

Elisabeth Johanna Noordhof was born in 1924 in Bloemendaal, Holland, the daughter of Gosse Eilke Noordhof.[1] She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Rijksmuseum in 1945.[2] Her older brother George H. Noordhof became a filmmaker in England.[3]

Career

Noordhof lived in England and the United States after World War II.[4][5] She and her family settled in New Zealand in 1966.[2][6] She had a studio in Dunedin, and taught at the University of Otago's summer arts schools in Kurow.[2] She painted the official portraits of several mayors of Dunedin, though mayor Sukhi Turner was not fond of her Noordhof portrait, and replaced it with a photograph in the city council chambers.[7] She was a patron of the Otago Art Society.[8]

Books illustrated by Els Noordhof

Personal life and legacy

In 1949, while she was living in Cambridge, Noordhof married an American Fulbright scholar, Harold "Hal" Wendell Smith.[1] They had four children.[6] She was widowed when Smith died in 2006, and she died in 2013, aged 89 years. The National Library of New Zealand holds audio recordings of a 2002 oral history interview with Noordhof, conducted by Penelope Dunkley.[14]

Her work was included in a 2017 exhibit, "About Face: Selected Portraits from the Collection", at the Eastern Southland Gallery.[15]

References

  1. [1]
    "Wedding Takes Place in Cambridge, England". The Evening Independent. 8 July 1949. p. 7. Retrieved 14 April 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. [2]
    "Hocken Legacy". University of Otago Magazine. Retrieved 14 April 2020.
  3. [3]
    "George Noordhof". BFI. Retrieved 14 April 2020.[dead link]
  4. [4]
    "Return from England". The Evening Independent. 1 September 1950. p. 7. Retrieved 14 April 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. [5]
    "Birth announcement". The Evening Independent. 20 October 1952. p. 2. Retrieved 14 April 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. [6]
    "Hal Smith: Lunchtime Poetry Readings" CSA News (July–August 1985): 3.
  7. [7]
    "Painting Snuck In". Channel 39. 5 April 2005. Retrieved 14 April 2020.
  8. [8]
    "The Permanent Collection". The Otago Art Society. Retrieved 14 April 2020.
  9. [9]
    Twentieth-century Children's Writers. Macmillan International Higher Education. 10 November 1978. p. 336. ISBN 978-1-349-03648-6.
  10. [10]
    "The Black Art, Special Collections Exhibition". University of Otago Library, New Zealand. Retrieved 14 April 2020.
  11. [11]
    Smithells, Olive; Noordhof, Els (1970). Look after your back, streamline your front. Dunedin, N.Z. : John McIndoe.
  12. [12]
    Glen, Esther (1983). Six little New Zealanders. Auckland, N.Z. : Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-340-33881-0.
  13. [13]
    "Esther Glen". Storylines. Archived from the original on 26 January 2020. Retrieved 14 April 2020.
  14. [14]
    Noordhof, Elisabeth Johanna (22 March 2002). "Interview with Elizabeth Noordhof". Interview with Elizabeth Noordhof | Items | National Library of New Zealand | National Library of New Zealand. Retrieved 14 April 2020.
  15. [15]
    "About Face". esgallery-x. Retrieved 14 April 2020.
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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Els_Noordhof, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.