The 16 square puzzle using the fine painting by Dutch artist Barend Cornelis Koekkoek. When the puzzle is complete, you will jump to a 25 square puzzle with the same image. You can go there directly by clicking the red square.

The 25 square puzzle using the fine painting by Dutch artist Barend Cornelis Koekkoek. When the puzzle is complete, you will jump to a 36 square puzzle with the same image. You can go there directly by clicking the red square.

The 36 square puzzle using the fine painting by Dutch artist Barend Cornelis Koekkoek. When the puzzle is complete, you will jump to a 49 square puzzle with the same image. You can go there directly by clicking the red square.

The 49 square puzzle using using the fine painting by Dutch artist Barend Cornelis Koekkoek. When the puzzle is complete, you will jump to a 64 square puzzle with the same image. You can go there directly by clicking the red square.

The 64 square puzzle using using the fine painting by Dutch artist Barend Cornelis Koekkoek. This puzzle is getting harder. Congratulations if you succeed. The applet permits up to a ten square puzzle. If there is any interest in my listing a puzzle of greater difficulty, drop me a line and I'll add it in. Information about the artist can be found below.

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The image is a portion of a Winter Landscape by Dutch artist Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803-1862), painted in 1838. You may see the splendid original full image here on the superb Rijksmuseum site. The work is an oil on canvas and is 62 x 75 cm in size. More of the artists's work can be seen via this page but the data available is quite limited, alas. When I said that the image on the Rijksmuseum site was splendid, it really is. Go and look for yourself. None of the other Koekkoek works that I have seen electronically come anywhere close to the quality of that image. I suspect that Koekkoek's other artwork is equally brilliant but that the available scans are disappointing. The bare trees in Koekkoek's painting are a joy to behold but they are scarcely visible in the image portion selected for this page.

I was not, in fact, able to find out very much about the artist in the time I spent on the WWW. I learn that he is considered to be the most important Dutch painter of the Romantic period. He was born on October 11, 1803 in Middelburg, a Dutch town near the North Sea coast, and was the oldest son of Johannes Hermanus Koekkoek, a noted artist who specialised in marine painting. The artist initially studied under his father and then at the Academy in Amsterdam. He travelled round Germany and Belgium, and developed a detailed meticulous style that drew inspiration from the beauty of the landscapes, most particularly the forests and mountains. He founded, in 1841, his own art academy in the German town of Kleve, just across the border in Germany, where a museum devoted to the artist can today be found. There is an image of the museum building on this page. The artist became successful and very famous in his lifetime and his work was even commissioned by royalty including Alexander II, Tsar of Russia. A "Rhine Landscape", painted by the artist, sold recently at auction for £264,865 but I was not able to find an electronic image of the work. But the image on this page may be it. Another magnificent painting of a city square in Rotterdam comes up for auction, I see, in late October 2001 and a thumbnail of it can be seen on this page and here. The artist died in Kleve on April 5, 1862.

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The java applet that runs the puzzle is courtesy of Axel Fontaine, who lives just south of the city of Brussels in Belgium. Axel invited free use of his fine applet which you can, I hope, download here. Axel, we thank you!