FATHER VERHOEVEN

COLOUR PAINTINGS OF WEIHSIEN -1943

Father Frans (Franciscus, Gerardus) VERHOEVEN, born in Tilburg (Holland) June 4, 1905.
He entered the Mission on October 1, 1926 and was ordained priest July 24, 1932.
In summer 1933, he travelled to China to join up with the Lazarist Catholic Mission in Luling, Yung Ping Fu, Hopei and remained there till his Weihsien internment in 1943. After the war, he returned to Holland and a year later, went back to China. Unable, under the circumstances to go to Luling, he went to Nanchang in Kiang Si province; During that period, he made a trip to Yuhon in the United States.
In 1950, he was sent to the Philippines and finally returned to Holland in 1955. He died in Delft, October 27, 1969 and is buried in Panningen.
His Weihsien pictures, painted in diluted oil colours, were made during his short stay there, in summer 1943. Almost all the Catholic priests were sent back to Peking in 1943, and were interned in their various missions under Japanese military guard till the end of the war.