Changes to a Civic Guard Portrait

2010

2018

Oud-Holland, 2001

Simiolus Netherlands Quarterly For the History of Art, 2009

2005

Studying 18th-century paintings and works of art on paper: CATS Proceedings, II, 2014

In studies of Dutch art nowadays, the makers of decorative paintings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are usually referred to as ‘decorative painters’ or ‘interior painters’, as if this was a profession in its own right. However, neither name existed at the time. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the painter’s trade—defined in the regulations of the Guild of St Luke—encompassed two separate and independent groups: the artist painters and the coarse painters. Because the best-known ‘decorative painters’ were also recognized artist painters, in art history the painting of decorations has come to be regarded as primarily their work. Archival research, however, has revealed that it was not unusual for a painted decoration to be the result of close collaboration between artist painters and coarse painters. In some cases a highly complex decoration actually proves to have been made by a coarse painter working alone. This will be demonstrated by reference to a painted chamber in Almelo dated 1778. Technical research has shown that all the painted work was executed by a coarse painter.

1996

This thesis in two volumes is a study of the paintings of David ill Ryckaert (1612-1661 ). Ryckaert grew up in a family of artists, and painted within a close community of fellow artists. According to several twentieth-century critics, Ryckaert was no more than a minor imitator of other Flemish painters. Underlying such relegation of Ryckaert is an uncritical and distinctly Modernist glorification of originality, or merely novelty. The chief argument of this thesis is that a careful reconstruction of the socio-cultural circumstances ofRyckaert's work calls into question the destructive employment of originality as a criterion of artistic greatness. Much of the vocabulary of Flemish art of the time was established. Artists thus proved their excellence both to fellow painters and a public fully conversant with the artistic traditions of subject and style, if such pictorial conventions were notably refmed or treated with a remarkable grace. Embracing the criteria of personal style and the beauty of the work, this environment is clearly averse to the blank veneration of new or original art. I argue that the term originality is itself dangerous therefore and that to neglect Ryckaert's work as that of a minor imitator is invalid and unhelpful. A careful examination of Ryckaert's known oeuvre reveals that his work is distinguished by a fine modelling, harmonious composition and a warm palette with colourful highlights. Although he relied on an established iconographic repertory, he maintained creative variation, thereby ensuring a steady demand. Ryckaert's imitation of other artists' work requires us to adjust twentieth-century criteria which tend to be pejorative of those who borrow from fellow artists. In fact Ryckaert could be said to have refmed his individuality as a painter through the testing creative encounter with and imitation of other artists.