Govert Flinck

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Govert Flinck
Rembrandt van Rijn
Known forPainting
MovementDutch Golden Age
Baroque

Govert (or Govaert) Teuniszoon Flinck (25 January 1615 – 2 February 1660) was a Dutch painter of the Dutch Golden Age.

Life

Born at

Mennonite, better known as an itinerant preacher than as a painter.[1]

Here Flinck was joined by

Rembrandt in 1634. Other members of the same family lived at Amsterdam, cultivating the arts either professionally or as amateurs. The pupils of Lambert probably gained some knowledge of Rembrandt by intercourse with the Ulenburgs. Certainly Joachim von Sandrart, who visited Holland in 1637, found Flinck acknowledged as one of Rembrandt's best pupils, and living habitually in the house of the dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh at Amsterdam.[1]

For many years Flinck laboured on the lines of Rembrandt, following that master's style in all the works which he executed between 1636 and 1648. With aspirations as a

John Maurice of Nassau, who was made stadtholder of Cleves in 1649.[1]

In 1652 a citizen of Amsterdam, Flinck married in 1656 an heiress, Sophie van der Houven, daughter of a director of the Dutch East India Company. Flinck was already well known in the patrician circles over which the brothers Cornelis and Andries de Graeff[2] and the alderman Jan Six presided; he was on terms of intimacy with the poet Joost van den Vondel and the treasurer Johannes Uitenbogaard. In his house, adorned with casts after the Antique, costumes, and a noble collection of prints, he often received the stadtholder John Maurice, whose portrait is still preserved in the work of the learned Caspar Barlaeus. Flinck died in Amsterdam on 2 February 1660.[3]

Works

Blessing of Jacob (1638)

The earliest of Flinck's authentic pieces is a

Palace on the Dam at Amsterdam. Here it is that Flinck shows most defects, being faulty in arrangement, gaudy in tint, flat and shallow in execution, that looks as if it had been smeared with violet powder and rouge.[4]

The chronology of Flinck's works, so far as they are seen in public galleries, comprises, in addition to the foregoing, the Grey Beard of 1639 at Dresden, A Young Archer from 1640 in the Wallace Collection, the Girl of 1641 at the Louvre, a portrait group of a male and female (1646) at Rotterdam, a lady (1651) at Berlin.[4]

In November 1659 the burgomaster of Amsterdam contracted with Flinck for 12 canvases to represent four heroic figures of

Batavians and Romans. Flinck was unable to finish more than the sketches.[4] After his death Rembrandt was asked to fill one of the commissions, and produced his last great history picture, the Conspriracy of Claudius Civilis, which the authorities rejected.[5]

In the same year he received a flattering acknowledgment from the town council of Cleves and the completion of a picture of Solomon which was a counterpart of the composition at Amsterdam. This and other pictures and portraits, such as those of Friedrich Wilhelm and

Hagar in the Berlin museum.[4]

Gallery

References

  1. ^ a b c Chisholm 1911, p. 519.
  2. ^ Pieter C. Vis: Andries de Graeff (1611–1678) ’t Gezagh is heerelyk: doch vol bekommeringen
  3. ^ Chisholm 1911, pp. 519–520.
  4. ^ a b c d Chisholm 1911, p. 520.
  5. ^ Clark, Kenneth, An Introduction to Rembrandt, pp. 60–61, 1978, London, John Murray/Readers Union, 1978

External links

Media related to Govert Flinck at Wikimedia Commons

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Flinck, Govert". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 519–520.

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