Hubertus Salomon Hordijk, the former army captain known as “Steel Bart”, spent a decade in the 1900s as Amsterdam’s autocratic Chief of Police. All that time he was taking photos.

Frosted trees and ice in the canals due to fog and sleet during the month of February 1908.

Not the most likely canditate for artistic photographer, Hubertus Salomon Hordijk (1862-1930) kept his passion to himself for a decade. No-one was going to argue. He was the police chief.

On April 22 1903 and by Royal decree an infantry captain by the name of Hubertus Salomon Hordijk succeeded the outgoing Amsterdam police commissioner to the top job.

Hordijk, who was known to his troops as “Steel Bart” due to his strict demeanor and appearance came to the notice of those who select potential police chiefs by using troops to maintain order during the widespread railway strikes earlier in 1903. As Chief of Police, Hordijk behaved completely autonomously, arranging and deciding as much as possible himself. He had little or no contact police on the beat or with the police unions. He also avoided the press as much as possible which caused a certain degree of animosity. In 1907, he was unable to work for several months due to a nervous disorder, at which the press wrote that “Steel Bart” had apparently lost his nerves of steel.

Hordijk had controversial opinions and his mouth got him in trouble. In 1908, as the Chief of Police in Amsterdam he automatically became the director of the National Office for the Suppression of the Trafficking in Women and Girls. Then, in 1909 he misguidedly warned the female population of the Netherlands against the Mormon religion. His broadside addressed in particular those who were considering settling in America; probably because of the risk of becoming involved in the perceived sexual slavery of a polygamous relationship. This incurred massive objections on the grounds of freedom of religion and that the case for Mormons being involved with the trafficking of women was far from proved.

Hordijk was a keen photographer and he took endless images of all kinds of events that he had privileged access to; crime scenes, state visits, criminals, fires, police procedures, the visits to Amsterdam of foreign dignitaries, Royal events; it wasn’t part of his job, just something the Chief of Police wanted to do.

Hordijk was Chief of Police in Amsterdam for a decade. From 1903 to 1913 when he resigned due to his nervous disorder. During that decade he filled five huge albums with photographs which now sit in the Amsterdam Municipal Archives.

TO DO The truly epic revolutionary Russian Empire reportage paintings of Ilya Repin (1844-1930).

Art & Design

Hordijk’s images, like a decade of life in 1900s Amsterdam, are an eclectic, chaotic and diverse miscellany.

The captions are his. Police issue.

“I have to draw to the point of madness, just draw. Just work, work and think of nothing else”, said the brilliant Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. It did him no good, he was just another “degenerate” artist to the Nazis.

From hat shop girl to Dutch art icon. But who was the Girl in the Kimono? The opaque story of an 1890s working class teenager immortalised by George Hendrik Breitner.

Descendant of samurai and relentless entrepreneur, Ogawa Kazumasa opened Tokyo’s first photo studio, shot Japan’s art treasures, the 100 prettiest geisha in Tokyo and taught photography to the military. His legacy is these exquisite images of flowers.

L’Estampe Moderne; the 1890s Parisian Art Nouveau “best of” album feat. various international artists. 4 lithographs every month. Just 3₣r 50c an issue.

The vibrant Parisian interior world of Édouard Vuillard, the introspective post-impressionist.

It’s easy to see how, in the mid 1800s, Paul Gustave Doré “hypnotized the widest public ever captured by a major illustrator”. Even Van Gogh was a fan, he copied Doré shortly before shooting himself.

In the 1890s the Dutch painter, George Hendrik Breitner took nude reference photos for his paintings. In the 1990s they were found.

Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach. 1880s free love messiah, naturist, pacifist, vegetarian, sun worshipper and unique symbolist painter.

Found photos : Three lost decades of Iowa Speedway recovered. With Merlin Benning, Lester “Red” Dralle. Claus Stricker, Don & Dick Feckers & Red Droste. 1950>1970.

The Art of Protest: Albert Hahn was righteous anger manifest. A graphic character assassin that even the mighty Germany Kaiser feared.

It’s 1914. and Orientalism meets Art Nouveau and the early stirrings of Art Deco in Emile-Allain Séguy’s “Samarkande: 20 Compositions en couleurs dans le Style oriental”.

The 1920s French Art Deco influencer who drew pure design inspiration from the natural world. Insectes (1929) by Émile-Allain Séguy.

The forgotten Finska Vyer birch bark album, by I.K Inha, 1892. Inside are raw natural landscape photographs of Finland. It won the 1st international photographic competion in Paris.

William Morris. Strawberry Thief . “You can picture my Father going out in the early morning and watching the rascally thrushes at work on the fruit beds…”

The Swiss artist, Ernst Kreidolf (1863-1956). A Princess helped him give up the life of a farmer to put his faith and future in the hands of the flower fairies. He lived magically ever after.

Dope fiends busted. 1950s narcotics crime photography from the archives of L.A. Enquirer.

John Martin’s sister was murdered by a neighbour, one brother was a “perfectly cracked” eccentric philosopher/inventor & the other an insane religious firestarter. Perhaps it’s no surprise John became the ultimate harbinger of The Apocolypse.

Outraged. The 1896 murder of Helen Thomson. Markinch, Fife, Scotland.

Achille Lemot learns the exact price of a mistress in 1870s Paris.

Erland Soderburg. A 1907 matricide. “Then I grabbed a small kitchen knife that was lying on the table. I hacked at her throat, then slashed it and the blood spurted out on me.”

Children of the Runestones. 300 A.D. Sweden.

The Dutch ocean liner Hooft, plagued by rats, burned three times and cursed by a French shipyard that lost 3 ocean liners to fire between 1930-1933.

1800s India. A mystery blue-eyed, pale skinned redhead is painted alongside those of 28 Mughal royals. An anonymous court artist evokes how richly the Indian “1%” lived, in these exquisite and rarely seen paintings.

Found. 3 Untitled works (1974). By an unknown artist working in a daylight atelier in Budapest.

8 mystery photographs from 1908/1910. From within some kind of medical institution or sanitorium somewhere in Eastern Europe. There’s one small clue: The Trendelenburg Position. Maybe.

Painter & early street photographer. The astonishing early street photography that helped George Hendrik Breitner add social realism to his famous paintings of Amsterdam.

India mid-1800s : Dr John Murray, cholera specialist an photographer. He spent 40 years travelling with gear weighing 400 pounds and a servant. His ever so slightly psychedelic negatives made it all worth it.

Samarkand, early 1900s. The first ever colour photographs of the ancient Persian city by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, an unknown Russian who invented his own colour photography process.

It’s 1914. and Orientalism meets Art Nouveau and the early stirrings of Art Deco in Emile-Allain Séguy’s “Samarkande: 20 Compositions en couleurs dans le Style oriental”.

Around the world with the rare travel drawings by the American painter, Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). Found in the archives of the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.

Hubertus Salomon Hordijk, the former army captain known as “Steel Bart”, spent a decade in the 1900s as Amsterdam’s autocratic Chief of Police. All that time he was taking photos.

TO DO The truly epic revolutionary Russian Empire reportage paintings of Ilya Repin (1844-1930).

It’s easy to see how, in the mid 1800s, Paul Gustave Doré “hypnotized the widest public ever captured by a major illustrator”. Even Van Gogh was a fan, he copied Doré shortly before shooting himself.