![\"van](\"http:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/PhotoParentsWEDGweb-203x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Jos, Nigeria, 10 December 1941.<\/p><\/div>\n
My mother Gwedoline (‘Gwen’)\u00a0Muriel Tester (1911-2005) was born in Wimbledon, South London and my\u00a0father John Bernard (‘Ben’)\u00a0Henry van Lierop Jr. (1915-60) was born to Dutch immigrants who had settled in Holland, Michigan, U.S.A. My parents met\u00a0as students at the Missionary School of Medicine in London in about 1939-40. As fluent French speakers,\u00a0they were\u00a0chosen by the ‘Sudan Interior Mission’ to join a small team striving to extend protestant evangelism into “French country”, where they arrived soon after Hausa language school and marriage in\u00a0Nigeria\u00a0in 1941.<\/p>\n
![\"Wedding](\"http:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/MenuParentsWEDG-185x300.jpg\")
<\/a>One of the menus made by my mother, Gwen.<\/p><\/div>\n
Both my parents were artistically gifted. My mother produced many pieces for special occasions throughout her life, and in retirement revived her childhood love for watercolour painting.<\/p>\n
![\"Pencil](\"http:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/MumByDadWEB-244x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Pencil portrait of Gwen by Ben<\/p><\/div>\n
This is the pencil portrait that my father drew of her on honeymoon. Unlike my mother, who could\u00a0sometimes be seen at\u00a0 work with a fine paintbrush, we children were\u00a0unaware of\u00a0my father’s\u00a0skills as a draughtsman, apart from his trick of quickly\u00a0drawing\u00a0an accurate postage- stamp-sized\u00a0caricature of himself in profile.<\/p>\n
However,\u00a0\u00a0my\u00a0prime\u00a0childhood artistic\u00a0influence\u00a0came from my Dutch-American grandmother, born Johanna\u00a0 (‘Hannie’) Catherina Hamel (1893-1992).\u00a0In her eighteenth year, she had attended an Art\u00a0Academy for one year, whereupon (according to family tradition) she was removed\u00a0by her father\u00a0lest\u00a0she be exposed in the following year to naked life\u00a0models.<\/p>\n
![\"Johan](\"http:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/My-Fathers-Parents2-copy-199x300.jpg\")
<\/a>My grandparents, Ben van Lierop and Johanna Hamel, an engaged couple in 1912, from a Hamel family group portrait.<\/p><\/div>\n
She was soon\u00a0married to\u00a0my grandfather, John Bernard Henry van Lierop Sr.\u00a0(1880-1957), a successful cigar manufacturer who\u00a0was\u00a0a protestant convert from Catholicism in the evangelical revival of 1906. The couple emigrated together\u00a0to the U.S.A. in 1914 and within a few years my grandfather had re-trained in theology\u00a0at the Moody Bible Institute, Chicago.\u00a0After some happy years as minister\u00a0to\u00a0a Dutch community in Washington State, he\u00a0accepted a missionary call\u00a0to Belgium,\u00a0re-settling his family\u00a0in Ghent. The family\u00a0lived in a domed\u00a0seventeenth century palace which doubled as their church. When he first arrived in Belgium, my father faced three new languages in school:\u00a0French, Latin and Greek.\u00a0He became a\u00a0keen cyclist and frequently visited Antwerp,\u00a0becoming an admirer of the painter Rubens. However, he decided to follow his father’s vocation, also training at the Moody Bible Institute. Meanwhile, as United States citizens, his parents were evacuated from occupied Belgium to the U.S. in 1940. Retired by 1955 to Holland, Michigan, they looked after my sister and me for eight very happy months, while our parents toured their support churches in the U.S.A., taking our younger brother with them.<\/p>\n
![\"Charcoal](\"http:\/\/bernardvanlierop.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/JohannaHamelSTILLlife-216x300.jpg\")
<\/a>A still life drawing in charcoal made by my grandmother in the first year course she attended at the Art Academy.<\/p><\/div>\n
Noticing my interest in drawing, my grandmother, showed\u00a0us her carefully preserved\u00a0portfolio of drawings and design studies\u00a0from the Art Academy 43 years earlier. I was overwhelmed by her amazing skill. Stimulated\u00a0to draw more ambitiously, I filled many sheets of unlined writing paper with wax crayon drawings.\u00a0 Finally, she allowed me to deposit my entire childish output into her precious portfolio before we left for boarding school in England, catching the liner for Europe in New York. While in New York,\u00a0 my father\u00a0took us up the Empire State building, to the Natural History Museum and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In common with many children born to missionaries in colonial times, my childhood was rich in experience, but fragmented. Born in\u00a01946 in\u00a0Ruabon, North Wales, Great Britain, I spent most of my early childhood in\u00a0the Niger Territory of French West Africa … Continue reading