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Gerard van Honthorst Biography
Netherlands Baroque painter & draftsman
born 1590 - died 1656
Also known as: Gerrit van Honthorst,
Gerardo delle Notti, Gherardo della Notte,
Gherardo Fiammingo, Ghirardo delle Notti,
Monsù Giraud della notte. |
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Student of:
Abraham Bloemaert
(1564-1651).
Brother of: Herman
van Honthorst (active 1620-1639),
Willem van
Honthorst (1594-1666).
Son of: Herman
Gerritsz. van Honthorst (active
1611-).
Grandson of: Gerrit
Huyghen van Honthorst (active
1579-).
Influenced by:
Caravaggio (1571-1610).
HONTHORST, GERRIT VAN (1590-1656), Dutch
painter of Utrecht, was brought up at the
school of Bloemart, who exchanged the style
of the Franckens for that of the
pseudo-Italians at the beginning of the 16th
century. Infected thus early with a mania
which came to be very general in Holland,
he went to Italy, where Gerrit van
Honthorst copied the naturalism and
eccentricities of Michelangelo da
Caravaggio. Home again about 1614, after
acquiring a considerable practice in Rome,
Gerard van Honthorst set up a school at
Utrecht which flourished exceedingly; and
he soon became so
fashionable that Sir Dudley Carleton, then
English envoy at the Hague, recommended Gerard van Honthorst pictures to the earl of Arundel and Lord
Dorchester. At the same time the queen of
Bohemia, sister of Charles I and electress
palatine, being an exile in Holland, gave
him her countenance and asked him to teach
her children drawing; and Honthorst, thus
approved and courted, became known to
Charles I, who invited him to England. There
he painted several
portraits, and a vast allegory, now at
Hampton Court, of Charles and his queen as
Diana and Apollo in the clouds receiving the
duke of Buckingham as Mercury and guardian
of the king of Bohemia's children. Charles
I, whose taste was flattered alike by the
energy of
Rubens and the elegance of Van Dyck, was thus first captivated by the
fanciful mediocrity of Honthorst, who though
a poor executants had luckily for himself
caught, as Lord Arundel said, much of the
manner of Caravaggio's coloring, then so
much esteemed at Rome. It was his habit to
transmute every subject into a night scene,
from the Nativity, for which there was
warrant in the example of Correggio, to the
penitence of the Magdalen, for which there
was no warrant at all. But unhappily this
caprice, though sublime in
Allegri [Correggio]
and
Rembrandt, was but a phantasm in the
hands of Honthorst, whose prosaic pencil was
not capable of more than vulgar utterances,
and Gerard van Honthorst pictures gained little from the repetition of
these quaint vagaries. Sandrart gave the
measure of his popularity at this
period when Gerrit van Honthorst says that
he had as many as twenty
apprentices at one time, each of whom paid
him a fee of 100 forms a year. In 1623
he was president of his
guild at Utrecht. After that Gerrit van
Honthorst went to England, returning to
settle anew at Utrecht, where he married. His position amongst
painters was acknowledged to be important,
and in 1626 Gerard van Honthorst received a
visit from Rubens, whom he
painted as the honest man sought for and
found by Diogenes Honthorst. In his home at
Utrecht he succeeded in preserving
the support of the English monarch, for whom
he finished in 1631 a
large Gerard van Honthorst picture of the king and queen of
Bohemia and all their children. For Lord
Dorchester about the same period he completed some illustrations of
the Odyssey; for the king of Denmark he composed incidents of Danish
history, of which one example remains in the
gallery of Copenhagen. |
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