Cornelis Ketel

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Cornelis Ketel
Cornelis Ketel by Hendrik Bary
Born18 March 1548
Gouda, Holland, Spain
Died8 August 1616(1616-08-08) (aged 68)
Known forPainting
MovementMannerism
Children1

Cornelis or Cornelius Ketel (18 March 1548 – 8 August 1616

portrait-painter, was also a poet and orator, and from 1595 a sculptor as well.[2]

According to Ketel's biography, written by his contemporary

civic group portrait
.

Life

Woman Aged 56 in 1594

Ketel was born in

Fontainebleau, where he was working in 1566, in the final years of the School of Fontainebleau, a sojourn which was no doubt decisive in forming his taste for Mannerist allegory. He was forced to leave France in 1567 when all citizens of the Habsburg Netherlands were expelled.[7]

He returned to Gouda, but the economy there was severely hit by the occupation of the city in 1572 by the

Hanworth Park House in Middlesex.[9]

Double Portrait of a Brother and Sister, c. 1604

Finding no market in England for his preferred allegorical subjects, Ketel returned to the Low Countries as his son Rafaël was born in Amsterdam in 1581. Ketel introduced the full-length group portrait format to the Dutch burghers with great success,

Wouter Crabeth
from Gouda.

After the death of wife in 1602, he remarried in 1607 to Aeltge Jans, but not in a

Remonstrant.[12] This marriage produced one son, Andries, who died at a very young age. Ketel suffered a stroke and made his will in November 1613, witnessed by Hendrick de Keyser. He died on 8 August 1616.[13]

Works

London years

Adam Wachendorff, a merchant of the Steelyard, London, 1574

Ketel quickly established himself as a successful painter of portraits in London. Karel van Mander records that Ketel was patronized by the prosperous German

Thomas "Customer" Smythe dated 1579, now widely dispersed, has been identified as the work of Cornelis Ketel.[19]

Apparently, all of Ketel's allegorical paintings have been lost, however, a formerly lost masterpiece was discovered and exhibited at the Tate Museum, London, in 1995, in a major exhibition entitled Dynasties. Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530-1630. Attribution as to title of this work, this may be the lost "Triumph of Wisdom and Prudence over Force" 1580, painted in England. (Miedema-Schulting 1988)[

incomplete short citation] Referred to as "Allegory", this fragment, which was recently discovered, today forms, together with the reverse of no. 55, the sole remnant of Ketel's rich production of painted allegories, described in detail in van Mander in his Schilder-Boeck of 1604 [Miedema 1994].[citation needed
]

Records indicate that Ketel charged £1 for a head-and-shoulders portrait and £5 for a full-length.[20] Nicholas Hilliard, then in his prime as a painter of portrait miniatures, typically charged £3 for a miniature.

Later works

The Company of Captain Rosecrans by Cornelis Ketel, 1588. The painting has been trimmed on all sides, especially at the top

Some of Ketel's history paintings are documented in various ways, including a

Danae to his wife, and getting it confused with an Annunciation.[22]

Ketel's 1588 The Company of Captain Rosecrans, the earliest Dutch group portrait where the figures are shown standing and full length, "greatly influenced later artists of militia pieces, such as Rembrandt in his

Night Watch of 1642."[23]—to whom one should add Frans Hals and Bartholomeus van der Helst[24]—and set an Amsterdam tradition; Hals's Harlem groups are from knee-height only, but his great Amsterdam group is full-length. However, Ketel, like Hals, spread his sitters laterally at irregular intervals, but kept them all in a row at the front of the picture space; it was left to Rembrandt to spread his subjects deep into the picture-space as well.[25] The picture has been trimmed on all sides, especially above; originally the city gate in front of which the group are standing was much more prominent, and in this respect closer to the Night Watch.[26] The group also carry their weapons indoors, another innovation.[2]

Together with

Oude Kerk, where he bought in 1593 a house on the so-called "Velvet Canal". Both Ketel and Pietersz developed an Amsterdam style often marked by depicting sitters "very close to the picture plane, from an unusual angle, and cropped closely by the frame" (see Double Portrait of a Brother and Sister, below).[27] Ketel seems to have kept a stock of drawings of poses, from which a patron might choose, and which could be worked up by studio assistants without the sitter's presence being required.[28] Van Mander records that around 1600 he at times discarded his brush and painted directly with his fingers, and even developed the trick of painting with his feet and toes—presumably just for short periods. This may have been to amuse himself and his sitters, to relieve boredom.[29] An alternative, perhaps more likely, explanation, is that he was forced to do so by a progressive paralysis, perhaps arthritic, which finally completely overcame him by 1610–1613.[30]

Gallery

  • Sir Martin Frobisher, 1577
    Sir Martin Frobisher, 1577
  • Thomas Pead, 1578. The skull is inscribed "Respice finem".
    Thomas Pead, 1578. The skull is inscribed "Respice finem".
  • Richard Goodricke of Ribston, 1578
    Richard Goodricke of Ribston, 1578
  • John Smythe, 1579
    John Smythe, 1579
  • Thomas Cecil, First Earl of Exeter. 1575
    Thomas Cecil, First Earl of Exeter. 1575

Notes

  1. ^ "Cornelis Ketel". Netherlands Institute for Art History. Retrieved 2018-08-07.
  2. ^ a b c d Rudolf Ekkart, Cornelis Ketel, Grove Art Online, accessed January 31st, 2008
  3. ^ Dutch online text, from the DBNL, K. van Mander, Het Schilder-boeck, Haarlem, 1604 (reprinted Utrecht 1969, translated as The Lives of the Netherlandish and German PaintersH. Miedema, ed. 1994-99).
  4. ^ Lionel Cust, "Notes on Pictures in the Royal Collections-XXIV. On Some Portraits by Cornelis Ketel" The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 22 No. 116 (November 1912:88-89, 92-940 p. 93.
  5. ^ "Cornelis Ketel." The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Oxford University Press, Inc., 2002. Answers.com 28 Jan. 2008. [1]
  6. ^ James, Painters and Their Works, p. 38
  7. ^ Hearn, p. 103
  8. Ditchley
    and with the Earl of Winchilsea.
  9. ^ Cust 1912:93, following van Mander.
  10. ^ Hearn, p. 105
  11. ^ R.H. Wilenski, Dutch Painting, "Prologue" pp. 27-43, 1945, Faber, London
  12. ^ "Inventarissen".
  13. ^ Hearn, p. 105
  14. ^ Waterhouse p. 39
  15. ^ Hearn, p. 109, and Strong, Gloriana, p. 101. The Sieve Portrait of Elizabeth in Siena, which Strong suggested might be by Ketel, is now known to be the work of Quentin Metsys the Younger; see Hearn, p. 85.
  16. ^ Hearn, p. 108-109
  17. ^ Cust eo. loc..
  18. ^ Cust, eo. loc..
  19. ^ Hearn, p. 108-110
  20. ^ Strong, English Icon, p. 49
  21. ISBN 0-300-07451-4
    ; a Heraclitus is in the collection of James O. Belden, Washington, DC (Galley 2004:88, fig.1).
  22. ISBN 0-300-10237-2
  23. ^ Rijksmuseum web site Archived 2005-02-22 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved 26 January 2008
  24. Nicolaes Eliaszoon Pickenoy
    , who was probably trained by Cornelis van der Voort, who was probably trained by Ketel
  25. ^ Hals "Meagre Company"
  26. ISBN 0-500-20167-6
  27. ISBN 978-1-85709-362-9
  28. ^ J. Richard Judson, "A New Insight into Cornelis Ketel's Method of Portraiture" Master Drawings 1.4 (Winter 1963:38-41, 88-89)
  29. ^ Judson 1963; Slive:7; Nicolas Galley, "Cornelis Ketel: A Painter without a Brush" Artibus et Historiae 25.49 (2004:87-100).
  30. ^ Grove op cit

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cornelis Ketel.

External links
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