René Jacobs

ACCOUNTANT TO ARTIST...


Many will remember René Jacobs as a Senior Management Accountant based in Rotterdam.  He joined Nedlloyd Lines in 1994  and remained with the company until P&O Nedlloyd was taken over by A.P. Moller-Maersk in 2006.   Then he made a major career change, moving from a role in finance in the global shipping industry to the world of the arts.


Since leaving P&O Nedlloyd René has held a number of positions  for various organisations in the Netherlands  (this included project managing Museumnacht Delft/Museum Night in Delft), but he has also been establishing himself as an artist.  


In 2006 he took on Galerie de Kunstkop, a combined art gallery and studio in the city of Delft.  In René's own words on LinkedIn: "Since April 2019 I have renamed my gallery into ART Jacobs. People are most welcome to come and visit my gallery and watch over my shoulder while I'm working.  Changing the name of the gallery was more than just another name.  I want to focus on a higher level of quality paintings and the international name was chosen because nowadays almost half of my work is being sold abroad".

A Sentimental Goodbye (René Jacobs - 2024)

One of René's latest paintings is of the P&O Nedlloyd Manet.  In a recent post on the P&O Nedlloyd Friends Facebook group he provided the following description:  "'A Sentimental Goodbye' Still enjoying painting containerships in old, existing paintings like this one. (It is the P&ONL Manet). I love every day of my life as an artist and I'm doing well but I still become slightly sentimental when I think back on the old days at P&ONL".


Understandably, former colleagues who saw René's post applauded this wonderful piece of art. 


For this article René explained that the painting is in fact a painting on a painting, or in his own words: "I have painted the containership in an old painting from the sixties: Old and new at a crossroads in one painting". 


René says that he has actually painted more than 30 containerships over the last 18 years.   We hope to feature more of his work on this website in the future.

Our thanks go to René for agreeing to to be the subject of this 'Where are they now?' article, and for kindly allowing the reproduction of some of his work here.


See also:

P&O Nedlloyd Manet (Wikipedia Commons)



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29/01/2024