1637-1712 Dutch Jan Van Der Heyden Gallery Van der Heyden grew up in Gorcum, but the family moved to Amsterdam around 1650. They lived on Dam Square. As a young guy he witnessed the fire in the old townhall which made a deep impression on him. He later would describe or draw 80 fires in almost any neighborhood of Amsterdam. When he married in 1661 the family was living on Herengracht, the most fashionable canal in Amsterdam. In 1668 Cosimo II de' Medici bought one of his paintings, a view of the townhall with a manipulated perspective. Van der Heyden often painted country estates, like Goudestein, owned by Joan Huydecoper II. He was not good in drawing figures and used for his paintings a metal plate for bricks, a sponge or moss for the leaves. Johannes Lingelbach, Adriaen van de Velde und Eglon van der Neer assisted him drawing the figures. Jan van der Heyden also introduced the lamp post and in 1672 impoved the design of the fire engine. He died in wealth as the superintendent of the lighting and director of the (voluntary) firemen's guild at Amsterdam. Van der Heyden was a contemporary of the landscape painters Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael, with the advantage, which they lacked, of a certain professional versatility; for, whilst they painted admirable pictures and starved, he varied the practice of art with the study of mechanics. Until 1672 he painted in partnership with Adriaen van de Velde. After Adrian's death, and probably because of the loss which that event entailed upon him, he accepted the offices to which allusion has just been made. At no period of artistic activity had the system of division of labour been more fully or more constantly applied to art than it was in Holland towards the close of the 17th century. Van der Heyden, who was perfect as an architectural draughtsman insofar as he painted the outside of buildings and thoroughly mastered linear perspective, seldom turned his hand to the delineation of anything but brick houses and churches in streets and squares, or rows along canals, or "moated granges," common in his native country. He was a travelled man, had seen The Hague, Ghent and Brussels, and had ascended the Rhine past Xanten to Cologne, where he copied over and over again the tower and crane of the great cathedral. But he cared nothing for hill or vale, or stream or wood. He could reproduce the rows of bricks in a square of Dutch houses sparkling in the sun, or stunted trees and lines of dwellings varied by steeples, all in light or thrown into passing shadow by moving cloud. He had the art of painting microscopically without loss of breadth or keeping. But he could draw neither man nor beast, nor ships nor carts; and this was his disadvantage. His good genius under these circumstances was Adrian van der Velde, who enlivened his compositions with spirited figures; and the joint labour of both is a delicate, minute, transparent work, radiant with glow and atmosphere.  Related Paintings of Jan van der Heyden :. | Church of the scenery | Fantasy buildings | Amsterdam | Old church landscape | Jan van der Heyden |
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Jan Antonisz. van Ravesteyn
(1572(?) - buried June 21, 1657) was a successful painter to the Dutch court in The Hague. Van Ravensteyn was born in The Hague. It is unknown who taught him how to paint, but he was a follower of the Delft portrait painter Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt. Van Ravesteyn is mentioned there in the city archives 1597. From 1598 until his death he lived in the Hague, where in 1598 he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke of the Hague. In 1604 he married Anna Arentsz van Berendrecht and in the same year he was mentioned as a good painter by Karel van Mander (though his earliest dated works are from 1611). In 1608 he bought a house on the Molstraat and in 1628 he moved in the Molstraat. In 1640 his wife was buried and in the same year his daughter Marie married one of his pupils, the painter Adriaen Hanneman. In 1654 he moved to the Nobelstraat next to the house of his daughter. In 1656 he left the guild with a group of dissatified painter friends and was one of the founders of the Confrerie Pictura. He was a Catholic and his name occurs often as a witness in the records of the church in the Molstraat, such as for the marriage of his daughter Agnes in 1641 with Willem van Culemborgh. His portrait was painted by Sir Anthony van Dyck and he produced Schutterstuk works. His workshop produced many portraits for the royal house of Nassau and he competed with Miereveld for several commissions. Van Ravesteyn was in turn, the teacher of Dirck Abrahamsz., Leendert Barthouts, Johannes Harmensz. Borsman, Aelbert Dircksz. Coeppier, Pieter Craen, Jacob Dirksz. van den Enden, Fransise de Goltz, Adriaen Hanneman, Barent Jansz., Thomas Ouwater, Clement Ram, Jan Rassenbourch, Frederick Sonnius, Dirck Verlaer, Jan Pous Voet and Pauwels Willemsz.
Gerbrand van den Eeckhout
1621-1674 Dutch Gerbrand van den Eeckhout Location Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was the son of the goldsmith Jan Pietersz. van den Eeckhout and a great friend as well as a pupil of Rembrandt, according to Houbraken, who commented that van den Eeckhout painted in the style of his master throughout his career. This is certainly true of van den Eeckhout (biblical) history paintings, but less so of either his portraits, which gradually displayed more Flemish elegance, or his genre pieces (from 1650), in which he followed various trends; he adapted his style to suit his subject with sensitive versatility. He was also a gifted colourist and an artist of great imagination, superior in both these respects to such better-known Rembrandt pupils as Ferdinand Bol and Nicolaes Maes. Moreover, he was extremely productive, and there is at least one dated painting for virtually every year between 1641 and 1674. In addition, he created a large body of drawings comprising histories, figures, landscapes and genre scenes executed in various media, including watercolour. He also made several etchings, mostly studies of heads, such as the Self-portrait (1646; B. 66). He died a bachelor, aged 53.
Charles Meynier
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