Fokko Tadama

Fokko Tadama (16 May 1871 – 25 May 1937) was a Dutch painter in the style of the Hague School, known primarily for coastal scenes, who spent much of his career in the United States. He was also a teacher and focused primarily on Japanese immigrant students.

Biography He was born in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. His father, Reinier Tadama (1844–1879), was a colonial administrator in Aceh and his mother was his father's mistress; a local woman. He was orphaned when his father died of tuberculosis while at a health spa in Germany. Having been taken to the Netherlands, he remained there and received his first artistic training from the landscape painter Sieger Jan Baukema (1852–1936). Later, he attended the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. In 1895 he married Thamine Tadama-Groeneveld, who was also a painter. In 1897 they settled in Egmond aan den Hoef and became part of the , led by George Hitchcock. They both specialized in seascapes.

In 1898, they had a joint exhibition at the Société des Artistes Français in Paris. By now, the critics had come to consider Thamine as the better artist and Fokko worked mostly as her assistant. In 1900, he gave up painting and devoted his time to hunting and caring for his large kennel of dogs. In 1907 they relocated to Katwijk aan Zee. The progress of their relationship after that is unclear. Some sources say that Thamine became mentally unsound and had to be institutionalized by 1910,