jan kiewiet

This is the uplifting story I promised you the other day. You can tell it to your relatives under the Christmas tree if you want. It is about my neighbour Marilyn. And about my dear father-in-law. And a lady in The Hague. My neighbour Marilyn maintains a website for her father Jan Kiewiet, who is a painter, and who immigrated to North America in 1953. A little over a week ago, she received an email through this website, sent by a lady in The Hague. The lady in The Hague owned a painting (a pastel rather, to be precise) by a Jan Kiewiet, and she was wondering whether the Jan Kiewiet whose website she found was the same Jan Kiewiet. The style looked very different, but then again the painting was very old, 1942. Marilyn had the answer, the painting was not her father's, but her grandfather's, and she was of course delighted to hear from somebody who owned one of his works. It gets better. The lady in The Hague had owned the painting for fourty years, but was now ready to part with it, and wanted to return it to the family, how sweet is that? The next day however, there suddenly were doubts, because friends of the lady in The Hague had tried to convince her to have the painting evaluated. Some people have just seen a few too many episodes of the Antiques Roadshow. Fortunately the day after that, the lady in The Hague had made up her own mind, and decided that she was going to go through with it. Fourty years ago she had gotten the painting as a present, she never paid for it, and she didn't want make money off it now. And that's where the dear father-in-law comes in. Willem drove to The Hague, climbed two flights of stairs with all of his heart problems (oh my), had coffee and cookies, and took the painting home. And now he is going to find a way to have it shipped to Canada. Marilyn feels like her grandfather is sending her a Christmas present from the grave!