Albertus Gerardus Bilders, also known as Gerard Bilders, was born in Utrecht in 1838. His father, Johannes Warnardus Bilders was a landscape painter. Gerard received his first art lessons from his father. The Bilders family lived in Oosterbeek in the Gelderse village which the predecessors of Bilders had discovered.

An affair with Nature and its Landscapes

Bilder’s father thought that nature was the only teacher and he took the lead in teaching Bilders to go out and paint ‘en plein air’, or outdoors. This became a life-long phenomenon that marked Bilder’s painting career. Forest scenes and older landscapes with animals became one of his main subjects of art. He developed enormous love and regard for nature. Some of the later celebrities of the Hague School such as Willem Roelofs, Paul Gabriel and Anton Mauve settled in Oosterbeek in the summers.

The Hague Drawing Academy

When Gerard was seventeen years of age, he met the wealthy literary Johannes Kneppelhout who also lived in another part of Oosgerbeek. Kneppelhout became a young and talented Gerard’s patron and sent him to The Hague for taking year-long drawing lessons at the Hague Drawing Academy. Thereafter, Gerard became an apprentice under the famous cattle painter Simon van den Berg. In 1858, Gerard made a study trip to Switzerland at his mentor’s expense. He went to the mountains and worked in the studio of the landscape and animal painter Charles Humbert. When Gerard’s mentor Kneppelhout became unhappy with his progress in the painting career, Kneppelhout stopped financial support to him.

Gerard left for Amsterdam in 1859 and moved in with his parents. He presented three of his paintings in an exposition in Brussels. Gerard’s contact with a number of painters from Barbizon school left a deep impression on him. He kept writing to Kneppelhout appreciatingly about his experience with the painters in the Barbizon school of art. After the death of his mother in 1861, Gerard strengthened his relationship with Kneppelhout further and they met regularly. He kept painting in the vicinity of Lochem in 1862 in bad weather. Gerard developed symptoms of tuberculosis and he started finding it more and more difficult to paint. He died in 1865 at the young age of 26 at his father’s house.