Cornelius Kriegoff was a famous Dutch Canadian painter who lived and worked during the nineteenth century. He was born in 1815 in the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Little is known of his early life, but he is known to have been accepted into the German Academy of Fine Arts in the year 1830. He would spend a further six years in Germany before immigrating to the New World and settling in New York City within the United States of America.

He joined the United States Army in 1837 and was subsequently sent to fight in the second Semniole War down in the everglades. During this time Krieghoff drew and sketched many of the sights he saw during the war, some of which would become paintings later on in his life. Overall, the war had a large influence on the way Krieghoff drew, painted, and thought.

Krieghoff left the army in the year 1840, after which there is little record of his life until 1846, when he is known to have moved to Montreal in Quebec, Canada, along with his wife. In pursuit of his art career, Kireghoff joined the Salon de la Société des Artistes de Montréal, and also visited the local Mohawk tribe, whom he drew and painted extensively.

After a brief trip to Paris to study at the world famous Louvre art museum under eminent painter Michel Martin Drolling, after which Cornelius Krieghoff returned to Canada, participating in the first ever exhibition hosted by the Toronto Society of Arts.

During the next few years of his life Krieghoff travelled extensively around Canada, Europe, and the United States, continuously producing work as he went. He is known for his vibrant oil paintings and landscapes and is famous for being the first person to use oil paint to capture the rugged beauty of the Canadian landscape. Krieghoff died in Chicago in the United States of America at the relatively young age of fifty six. One of his most famous paintings is undoubtedly the Caughnawaga Indians at Camp.

View Cornelius Krieghoff Gallery