Willem Jilts Pol ( Leek , 26 March 1905 - Ramatuelle , 15 August 1988 ) was a Dutch artist and art critic. His work includes woodcuts , paintings and drawings . As a critic, he was attached to the journal orientation.
In the thirties he lived in France , where he painted French and Italian landscapes. In Paris he met his first wife, the daughter bankers and painter Arnoldine Adriane Mees, with whom he Lived with in Wassenaar. Late thirties he went with her to the Dutch East Indies , where in 1940 on Java daughter Talitha was born. During the Second World War, Pol was interned in a Japanese POW camp while his wife and daughter were in another camp. After the war the family returned to the Netherlands where in 1948 his wife died as a result of the hardships in the Japanese camps.
After her death, Pol lived from 1948 until the fifties in England . There he married in 1952 Poppet John, daughter of the painter August John . The last decades of his life he lived with her in southern France where he died in 1988. He left behind an extensive oeuvre.
The William Jilts Pol work is always recognizable by the use of pastel colors and a quick but accurate lines. The typical "fifties" shape his work highly valued by many connoisseurs.
