Taco Scheltema

Taco Scheltema, or Take Pieters Scheltema (16 August 1766, Harlingen - 7 September 1837, Arnhem) was a Dutch portrait painter.

He was the son of an innkeeper named Pieter Scheltes Scheltema (1702-1771). After a short time in Amsterdam, studying drawing and painting with the portrait and landscape painter, Pleun Piera (1734-1799), he qualified for admission to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Upon graduation, he travelled through Saxony and Holland; eventually settling in Rotterdam in 1794, where he had been commissioned to paint the founders and administrators of the Batavian Society for Experimental Philosophy.

He ultimately established his studio in Arnhem and, throughout his career, mostly focused on family paintings. He married Jacomina van Nijmegen (1768-1825) in 1799, with whom he had five children.

His own descendants included several other artists; notably his grandson, Taco Jan Scheltema (1831-1867), who is represented in the Louvre, as well as Jan Hendrik Scheltema and Leendert Scheltema (1876-1966), who would specialize in landscapes.

• A. Staring, "Een vergeten Portrettist: Taco Scheltema", in: Oud-Holland, #54 (1937), pgs. 193-213.
• Nederland's Patriciaat, #27 (1941), pgs. 218-288.
• J. H. Brouwer (ed.), Encyclopedie van Friesland, Elsevier 1958