Godefridus Schalcken

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Self-portrait , 1679
Françoisia van Diemen, painted by Schalcken

Godefridus Schalcken or Godfried Schalcken (* 1643 in Made near Breda , † November 16, 1706 in The Hague ) was one of the leading Dutch painters of the late 17th century. In the tradition of Leiden fine painting , he created extremely illusionistic, meticulously painted portraits , genre paintings , biblical and mythological histories, and occasionally still lifes and landscapes with accessories. His trademark was the representation of special lighting effects, especially the candlelight.

Life

Godefridus grew up in a family of Protestant pastors on both his mother's and father's side in Dordrecht , where his father was the principal of the Latin school. He received his first training here from Rembrandt's student Samuel van Hoogstraten . When he left for England in 1662, Schalcken moved to Leiden. He specialized in fine painting in the Gerrit Dous workshop . At the time, this small-format, brilliantly colored painting achieved the highest prices from collectors and on the troubled art market. Schalcken probably returned to Dordrecht around 1665 and started his career as an independent artist. In addition to genre paintings, Schalcken also dedicated himself to lucrative portraiture from the start. After Nicolaes Maes moved to Amsterdam in 1673, he became the leading portrait painter in Dordrecht. A splendid early showpiece of his virtuoso skills is the pair of portraits in the collections of Prince von und zu Liechtenstein, made in 1679, the year he married Françoisia van Diemen (1661–1744) from Breda. Schalcken shows himself based on the model of the artist portraits by Anthonis van Dyck in the habitus of the witty and dignified gentleman who confidently turns to the viewer. He presents his wife, whose gaze slides to the side with refined restraint, to the beholder's eyes in full beauty and virtue. A late counterpart of the Schalcken couple from the artist's death in 1706 frames his biography (private property). Of the ten common children documented, only Françoisia (1692–1757), born in London, reached adulthood.

Maria Schalcken , self-portrait in front of her easel. She was tutored by her brother Godefridus

In the 1680s, Schalcken also became tangible as the teacher of numerous artists in Dordrecht, the most famous of whom were Arnold Boonen (1669–1729) and Carel de Moor (1655–1738). He also taught his sister Maria Schalcken (1645 / 48–1699), of which only a few, but extremely high-quality works have survived, including the self-portrait at the easel (Naples, The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, which has long been attributed to her brother himself) Collection).

In order to be able to receive prominent portrait commissions, the painter joined the painters ' guild in The Hague in 1691 , initially without taking up residence there. In 1692, Schalcken finally moved to London. He lived in the vicinity of the court of Willem III. , the Dutch governor and English king. In England, Schalcken established himself as a master of candlelight, as which he would go down in the canon of art history. Several self-portraits, including the self-portrayal created for Cosimo III de'Medici and his famous self-portrait gallery in Florence, show him with a candle. The copied portrait of Willem III, based on a model by the English contemporary Godfrey Kneller , also shows the monarch with a candlestick in his hand (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum ). In collaboration with the mezzotint specialist John Smith, numerous prints based on Schalcken's works were created in England, which also spread his fame, including in particular his earliest self-portrait with a candle from 1694, the original of which is now in the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, Maryland is located. In 1696 the artist returned to the Netherlands and now settled in The Hague, where lucrative orders beckoned.

As early as the 1680s, in addition to genre painting, he had increasingly turned to biblical and mythological histories. In addition to the Florentine court, Schalcken also made a name for himself with other princely art lovers. Before 1700 he delivered z. As a Holy Family to Copenhagen to King Christian V . The most important patron of his late career was Elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz , whose gift of honor, a medal with a gold chain, was also used by Schalcken in his late self-portrait from 1706. Nonetheless, his ties to the court were less close than those of other Düsseldorf court painters such as Jan Frans van Douven or Adriaen van der Werff . Together with these two artists, Schalcken created a devotional altar on the life of Mary in 1703, which Johann Wilhelm commissioned as a gift for his wife Anna Maria . Each of the three artists created a panel of the triptych (Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi ), whereby the prominence of the light effects on all three paintings was probably ultimately inspired by Schalcken. A stay in Düsseldorf in 1703, during which the artist is said to have lived in the Haus zum Goldenen Helm on Flingerstrasse, is assumed, but there is no documentary evidence of this.

Schalcken's extremely successful career was aptly summed up by his first biographer Arnold Houbraken (1721) with the words:

"He was one of the happiest Dutch painters, as his work was paid abundantly from the beginning to the end of his life, so that he reaped the fruits of his hard work while still alive, which only few succeed."

- Arnold Houbraken : Groot Schilderboek 1718/21, vol. 3, p. 176

plant

Despite a comparatively long creative period of around 40 years, Schalcken created a numerically limited oeuvre due to his meticulous, labor-intensive painting style , of which around 250 surviving paintings are known to date. This shows a great variety in which the ambition of an all-round artist is expressed as well as a sales-ready customer friendliness in dialogue with the wishes of his clientele. Schalcken did not only devote himself to a wide variety of picture themes (see above). He mastered the miniature format as well as the life-size portrait, painting on copper , wood and canvas . While the finely distributed application of paint, which made the brushstroke almost invisible, was his specialty, Schalcken developed a looser, flatter style of painting during his stay in England, which accommodated larger formats and was possibly also due to the increased demand for his works. In addition to paintings, individual drawings in red chalk, chalk, rarely pen and etchings have been preserved. In the oeuvre of drawings, portrait sheets, so-called ricordi, predominate, which minutely documented a completed portrait and were probably intended to remain in the workshop as visual material for future customers.

Schalcken seems to have signed his works in principle , but only rarely dated them , which makes precise chronology of the works difficult. Dated works have survived from 1667 to 1706, the year of his death. The earliest known and dated picture, Girl with a bird in a window niche (lost, Beherman 1988, no. 143) shows just as much as an interior that was created before that depicts a lady at the dressing table (private property) and to which a study drawing in the Hamburger Kunsthalle has received, in motifs and painting technique, the influence of Gerrit Dou . In Schalcken, there are also repeated thematic references to the work of Gerard ter Borch , Gabriel Metsu , Jacob Ochtervelt , Frans van Mieris the Elder. Ä. , Pieter van Slingelandt or Caspar Netscher . Schalcken drew on a wide variety of image sources and skillfully updated the old masters so popular on the art market of the time . He himself owned a comprehensive collection of graphic sheets from which he drew inspiration from Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting, the Utrecht Caravaggisti , but also from contemporary French and Dutch prints.

Young woman in front of the mirror

Popular topics such as the lady in front of the mirror or at the toilet , the letter reader , the rommelpot player, pancake eater, brothel scenes, medical consultations, playing with the pig's bladder, etc., he gave distinctive punchlines with his sparkling visual wit. In an original way he takes up art theoretical debates such as the Paragone or the inspiration of love . His illusionistic painting style, which gives the objects and textures shown almost haptic qualities, and the smooth, glossy enamel surfaces, in conjunction with seductive actors, achieve extreme sensual persuasiveness in intimate moments. Schalcken often assigns the viewer the role of a voyeur and makes use of the mysterious atmosphere of nocturnal views in the flickering light. These aspects are illustrated e.g. B. the lady in front of the mirror (Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud ), who is shown in the evening toilet - specifically the flea hunt . With this, the artist subtly alludes to the topos of amorous itching and desire, the lover's envy of the flea living on the bosom of the beloved, as well as popular ideas of the flea as cupid or allusions to defloration . At the same time, Schalcken transfers traditional rural genre actors in his paintings to a noble, aristocratic world.

In addition, he invented extremely original motifs: the amorous pawn game (London, Royal Collection), a Holy Family at prayer (Copenhagen, Statens Museum ) or a sweet tooth (Naples, The Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection). He also chose contemporary literary sources, conveyed through the writings of Jacob Cats or the theater ( The Recovered Preciosa , Dublin, National Gallery ) as well as rarely depicted parables of the New Testament ( The parable of the lost silver coin , New York, The Leiden Collection ).

While he cultivated the portrait over his entire career, the thematic interests shifted increasingly from genre painting to history, which dominated in the later work next to candlelight tronies in the course of the 1680s .

Works (selection)

  • The medical consultation ("the misstep")

  • Portrait of Diederick Hoeufft, cavalry captain

  • Lady by candlelight in front of a mirror

  • Portrait of Isabella Agneta Deutz

  • Salome , ca.1700

  • Allegory of happiness , n.d. (lost)

Art-historical significance and afterlife

Already valued during his lifetime, Schalcken was one of the indispensable “greats” in the painting cabinets of the 18th century, especially in France and Germany. His allusive, gallantly amorous themes met the taste of the age. Numerous successors and imitators attest to the popularity. The Englishman Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797) and the French Jean-Baptiste Santerre (1651–1717) are among the best. Countless copies of individual works, such as the so-called Dresden Pygmalion, prove the widespread admiration for his art.

Despite early criticism of the supposedly exclusively dominated special effect of candlelight and the multiple references to the disgraceful anecdotes spread by Jacob Campo Weyerman (1677–1747) or later Horace Walpole , which assumed that Schalcken treated his customers disrespectfully and uncouthly, his fame surpassed his fame into the 19th century that of many of his now more well-known artist colleagues. His lighting moods became literally proverbial and even Goethe recognized a "scarf" in a corner of his Dresden guesthouse illuminated by lamplight. The mysterious candlelight scenes significantly inspired the Irish poet Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu to write the gothic novel Schalcken The Painter (1839/1851). The artist also serves as a reference for modern lighting design .

With the change in taste, accompanied by art writers like Thoré Bürger and Jacob Burckhardt , who preferred the bourgeois-democratic Dutch art of Frans Hals , Rembrandt or Vermeer to the courtly-feudal art of the late 17th century, to which Schalcken was attributed, the artist fell more and more into oblivion.

Hofstede de Groot compiled an expanded list of works in 1912 based on an initial catalog raisonné by the English art dealer of John Smith in 1833 (supplement 1842) . Nonetheless, he attributed Schalcken to the decay of Dutch painting and saw in him the epigonal imitator of his teachers. In 1988 the catalog raisonné , compiled posthumously from the research results of Thierry Beherman , was published . a. by Peter Hecht , Guido MC Jansen , Mirjam Neumeister and Sophie Schnackenburg followed. Publications and exhibitions on Leiden fine painting and the art of the late 17th century included Schalcken with individual works.

View of the exhibition Schalcken - Painted Seduction

An exhibition at the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud in Cologne and the Dordrechts Museum in Dordrecht is dedicated to the painter for the first time in 2015/16 as part of a monographic retrospective.

literature

Catalog raisonnés

  • Thierry Beherman 1988
  • Cornelis Hofstede de Groot 1912
  • John Smith 1833 and 1842

Exhibitions

  • Anja K. Sevcik (Ed.): Schalcken - Painted Seduction . Exhibition catalog Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud Cologne, September 24, 2015 - January 24, 2016. With contributions by Nicole Elizabeth Cook, Marcus Dekiert, Wayne Franits, Guido MC Jansen, Sander Paarlberg, Eddy Schavemaker, Anja K. Sevcik. Belser-Verlag, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-7630-2721-7 .
  • Ekkehard Mai, Sander Paarlberg, Gregor JM Weber (eds.): From the nobility of painting. Holland around 1700 . Exhibition catalog Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud Cologne, Dordrechts Museum, Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel. Cologne 2007.
  • Peter Hecht (Ed.): De Hollandse fijnschilders . Van Gerard Dou dead Adriaen van der Werff. Exhibition cat. Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, The Hague 1989.

conference

  • The lectures at the international conference Godefridus Schalcken - Fascination and Meaning (Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, January 21-23, 2016) as well as other research articles on the artist were published in the Wallraf-Richartz yearbook 77/2016.

Web links

Commons : Godfried Schalcken  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Also: Gottfried Schalken, Godefridus Schalcke, Godfrid Schalckius, Godefridus Schalcken, Godefridus Schalken, Godfried Schalken u. a. ( Union List of Artist Names> Full Record Display , J. Paul Getty Trust) . With Godefridus Schalcken , the artist signed notarial files throughout.
  2. ↑ Mirjam Neumeister: The night piece with artificial light as an artistic trademark - on Godfried Schalcken's (1643–1706) oeuvre . this. The night piece with artificial light in Dutch painting and graphics of the 16th and 17th centuries: Iconographic and coloristic aspects. Petersberg, 2003, p. 339-368 .
  3. ↑ Guido MC Jansen: An artist's life and his time . In: Anja K. Sevcik (Ed.): Schalcken - Painted Seduction, exhibition catalog Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud Cologne . Stuttgart 2015, p. 14-24 .
  4. ↑ Schalcken - Painted Seduction . In: Anja K. Sevcik (Ed.): Exhibition catalog Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud Cologne . Stuttgart 2015, p. 116-118 .
  5. ↑ Wayne Franits: "A Very Famous Dutch Painter" Schalcken in England, 1692-1696 . In: Anja K. Sevcik (Ed.): Exhibition catalog Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud Cologne . Stuttgart 2015.
  6. ^ Karl Strauven: About artistic life and work in Düsseldorf to the Düsseldorf painter school under the direction of Schadow . Düsseldorf 1862, p. 20 .
  7. ↑ Guido MC Jansen: Additions to Schalcken's Oeuvre as a Draftsman . In: Hoogsteder Mercury . tape 13/14/1992 , pp. 74-80 .
  8. ↑ Anja K. Sevcik: Godefridus Schalcken - aspects of a (ver) leading painter . In: Anja K. Sevcik (Ed.): Schalcken - Painted Seduction, exhibition catalog Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud Cologne . Stuttgart 2015, p. 56, fig. 29, 30 .
  9. ↑ Junko Aono: Confronting the Golden Age. Imitation and Innovation in Dutch Genre Painting . Amsterdam 2015 (cf. on the general phenomenon).
  10. ↑ Peter Hecht: Art Beats Nature, and Painting Does So Best of All. The Paragone Competition in Duquesnoy, Dou and Schalcken . In: Simiolus . tape 29/2002 , p. 184-201 .
  11. ↑ Sophie Schnackenburg: Study and Inspiratio: Godfried Schalcken's painting Art contemplation by lamplight (around 1680/85) in the field of tension between iconographic tradition and contemporary art theory . In: Munich Yearbook of Fine Arts . tape 54/2003 , p. 185-217 .
  12. ↑ Peter Hecht: Special case Holland, seriousness and irony of the Paragone in a land without sculptures . In: Joris von Gastel, Yannis Hadjinicolaou, Markus Rath (eds.): Paragone als Mitstreit . Berlin 2014, p. 237-254 .
  13. ↑ For interpretation, see the catalog text for the painting by Anja K. Sevcik in the exhibition catalog Cologne 2015, No. 29
  14. ^ Jacob Campo Weyerman: De levens-beschryvingen der Nederlandsche const-schilders en const-schilderessen . tape 3 (1729/69) . The Hague / Dordrecht, p. 11-17 .
  15. ^ Horace Walpole: Anecdotes of Painting in England; With Some Account of the Principal Artists […]. Collected by the Late Mr. George Vertue . London 1762, p. 130 ff .
  16. ^ Peter Hecht, Candlelight and Dirty Fingers, or Royal Virtue in Disguise: Some Thoughts on Weyerman and Godfried Schalcken . In: Simiolus . tape 11/1980 , pp. 23-38 .
  17. ^ Johann Wolfgang von Goethes: From my life. Poetry and truth . 2nd part, 8th book.
  18. ^ Translated and provided with an afterword by Heiko Postma, Hannover 2011; Filming in 1979 by Leslie Megahey for the BBC
  19. ↑ Bettina Köhler: Light in the house: Phöbus Apollon! Selene! Candle! Light bulb! Neon tubes! In: Werk, Bauen + Wohnen . S. 38-44 .
  20. ^ C. Hofstede de Groot: Descriptive and critical directory of the works of the most outstanding Dutch painters of the XVII. Century . No. 5 . Esslingen 1912, p. 325-440 .
personal data
SURNAME Schalcken, Godefridus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schalcken, Godfried; Schalcke, Godefridus; Schalckius, Godfrid; Schalken, Godefridus; Schalken, Godfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch painter
DATE OF BIRTH 1643
PLACE OF BIRTH Dordrecht
DATE OF DEATH November 16, 1706
Place of death The hague