SPEELMAN, Arie

About the Dutch photographer Arie SPEELMAN

Arie SPEELMAN was a Dutch Oriental traveler who toured Palestine between 1926 and 1931. He had his slides, some of which he had taken himself in the Holy Land and some of which he had bought locally from the legendary 'American Colony' and later showed on lecture tours through Holland, hand-colored with oil paints by Eric Matsson and his wife as well as his assistant Edith Yantiss - an extraordinarily elaborate and expensive process, but before the invention of color photography the only way to achieve a color image close to the original. The Speelman collection was later donated to the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam.

Photo books with works by Arie SPEELMAN

The material was later compiled into a coffee-table book, titled 'The Well of Abraham, The Holy Land in Hand Painted Photographs'; in 2008, the German-language edition, 'Auf den Spuren Abrahams: Das Heilige Land in alten handkolorierten Photographien' was published.