Jan van de Cappelle
Jan van de Cappelle (or Joannes / van der / Capelle in various combinations; 25 January 1626 (baptized) – 22 December 1679 (buried))
He lived all his life in Amsterdam, and as well as working as an artist spent much, or most,[3] of his time helping to manage his father Franchoy's large dyeworks, which specialized in the expensive dye carmine, and which he eventually inherited in 1674. Presumably because of this dual career, there are fewer than 150 surviving paintings,[2] a relatively small number for the industrious painters of the Dutch Golden Age. His marine paintings usually show estuary or river scenes rather than the open sea, and the water is always very calm, allowing it to act as a mirror reflecting the cloud formations above; this effect was Cappelle's speciality.
Life
His father (1594–1674) was a cloth-dyer, his mother came from Rotterdam; they married in 1622 in Amsterdam. Joannes' baptism is recorded in the
His earliest dated painting is an important and already highly accomplished one from 1645, and only one is dated in the 1660s.[9] From this most authors assume he devoted his later years to his business, in which his brother Franchois also worked. In May 1661 he bought a house in the Koestraat,[10] near Nieuwmarkt, moving from the even more expensive Keizersgracht.[11][12] The house with a garden, next to a school, was sold by a son of Sweelinck, and in the deed of purchase van de Cappelle is simply called schilder (painter) and not a master painter.[13]
His wife predeceased him in 1677, and van de Cappelle himself was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk on 22 December 1679. He left seven children.[14] The inventory of his property at death has survived and is the main source of information about his impressive art collection. It took seven months to list all.[15] He left his children six houses, a country house south of Loenen on the river Vecht (Utrecht), a pleasure yacht, "44 bags of ducats", silk and bonds together valued at 92,720 guilders.[16] A lengthy list of the items from his splendid wardrobe was made, (including his violet stockings)[17] as well as a list of his large and important art collection.[14]
Works
The majority of his works are marine or river views, nearly always with several vessels, but he also left a number of small winter landscapes somewhat in the manner of
He had no interest in rough seas or cloudless skies,[21] showing large cloudy skies, with the horizon low, about 15-20% of the way up the vertical axis. The clouds are often mirrored in the dead calm water, although light ripples may be shown. As is often the case in Dutch seascapes, there is often a warship or "statenjacht" ("States yacht"), an official yacht used for transport, official salutes and other business. The edge of the composition often slices through vessels, leaving them half seen. Van de Cappelle painted many parade marine subjects, depicting "a formal gathering of ships for a ceremonial occasion".[2] Other paintings, mostly smaller and of less busy subjects, a type often called "calms", show "an all-pervading luminous atmosphere that softens all outlines and unifies forms and local colours",[2] or as Kenneth Clark puts it, "When sky was reflected on water, there was achieved that unity of luminous atmosphere which is ... the whole point of van de Capelle and van de Velde".[22]
In his early works he followed the muted palette of the "tonal school", but enlived with local highlights of bright colour, but moved in his later works to "a warmer golden tonality, exceptionally allowing himself a greater colouristic exuberance when setting the rosy glow of a sunset sky against water of a deep turquoise blue, as in the River Scene with Sailing Vessels (
Cappelle made a small number of etchings; only two signed ones of landscapes are now firmly attributed to him.[23] Fewer than twenty of the nearly 750 of his own drawings in the 1680 inventory have survived identifiably.[24]
Art collection
He had one of the largest art collections of his day, with 192
The collection had major groups as follows:[29]
- Rembrandt: 7 paintings and five portfolios with over 500 drawings,[30] including 56 "histories", an album of 135 drawings of women and children, and 300 landscape drawings - almost all those known of the last two types. This was the largest group of Rembrandt drawings ever owned by a collector.[31]
- Simon de Vlieger: 9 paintings and over 1,300 drawings including one unfinished painting,[32]
- Jan van Goyen: 10 paintings and over 400 drawings
- Jan Porcellis: 16 paintings
- Hendrick Avercamp: paintings and nearly 900 drawings
- Hercules Segers: 5 paintings, a large proportion of his known output and perhaps bought from Rembrandt.
- There were seven paintings listed, one unfinished, made by van de Cappelle himself,[33] but between 800 drawings, perhaps around 1150, including works described as copies by him after Porcellis and de Vlieger
- Several Willem Buytewech (86), Pieter de Molijn (57), and Allaert van Everdingen(52)
The collection included paintings by
Reputation and location of works
Van de Cappelle had a considerable influence on painters of both marine and winter subjects, including Willem van de Velde the Younger in the former group, Jan van Kessel in the latter, and Hendrick Dubbels in both.[2]
Van de Cappelle does not seem to have participated much in the commercial art world of his day, which may account for his absence from all the contemporary collections of artists' biographies such as the over 500 lives by
The largest collection of his work is the nine paintings in London, as mentioned above. There are works in the
Notes
- ^ "Capelle", which he sometimes used himself, is also found. His signatures may also use "Capel" and "Joannes". MacLaren, 73
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Grove
- ^ In 1666 he gave his occupation to a notary as "dyer".
- ^ Jeroen Giltay en Jan Kelch, Lof der Zeevaart, de Hollandse zeeschilders van de 17de eeuw (Rotterdam, 1996), pp. 187; Birthcertificate Amsterdam City Archive [1][permanent dead link]
- ^ MacLaren, 73, Grove.
- ^ Dutch Culture in a European Perspective: 1650, hard-won unity Door Willem Frijhoff, Marijke Spies [2]
- ^ Bredius, A. (1892) De schilder Johannes van de Capelle, p. 29. In: Oud-Holland 10., see also Michel 62 and most writers
- ^ Michel, 156
- ^ MacLaren, pp. 74, 76; this is NG 966, where the last digit is unreadable. Another painting, possibly not authentic, is said to have a date of 1671 or 1675.
- ^ "View on Koestraat". Archived from the original on 12 November 2007. Retrieved 4 April 2010.
- ^ "View on Keizersgracht". Archived from the original on 24 July 2011. Retrieved 4 April 2010.
- ^ The purchase of the house is surprising. Liedtke suggests it had to do with the distance to the dye works. Liedtke, W. (2008) Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 120. Yale University Press. New Haven and London.
- ^ Breen, J.C. (1913) De woning van Jan van der Heyden in de Koestraat met eenige bijzonderheden uit de geschiedenis deezer straat. In: Yearbook Amstelodamum, p. 111. Being a "Mr schilder" would mean he was admissioned as a master in the painters guild.[citation needed]
- ^ a b Grove and MacLaren
- ^ After the death of his son, also called Jan, his share of the collection was dispersed. One large sale was on 6, 7 and 8 November 1709. See Dutch drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library, Volume 1; Dudok van Heel, S.A.C. (1975) Honderdvijftig advertenties van kunstverkopingen uit veertig jaargangen van de Amsterdamsech Courant 1672-1711, p. 171. In: Yearbook Amstelodamum.
- ^ Bredius, A. (1892) De schilder Johannes van de Capelle, p. 26-40. In: Oud-Holland 10. An English translation of his inventory is in: Russell, M. (1975).
- ^ Reprinted here Inventory of clothes App II, Q, pp 348-9
- ^ MacLaren, 73 says "about forty" winter landscapes, but this seems outdated or a mistake. Grove ("fewer than twenty") and more recent sources give far fewer - see the list given by Lindsay Fine Art Archived 5 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine who recognise only about fifteen]
- ^ Richard Green. One recorded as dated 1644 is untraced, per Grove.
- ^ MacLaren, 73-79, or see online link below
- ^ A "Storm" mentioned in his inventory is untraced
- ^ Landscape into Art, 31
- ^ Grove - Hollstein gives him nine, but most of these are now not regarded as his.
- ISBN 9789040086854.
- ^ Rooses, M. (1898) DE HOLLANDSCHE MEESTERS [3] Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine. The inventory of Capelle's estate was first published by Abraham Bredius, also in Oud Holland
- ^ Slive, 220
- ^ Rembrandt
- ^ Norton Simon Museum; and Simon's purchase
- ^ see note at end of section for all these
- Ecce Homo, matches one of the inventory items. MacLaren, 346-349; National Gallery online
- ^ JSTORFour Dutch Landscape Drawings, Louise S. Richards, The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Vol. 48, No. 10 (Dec., 1961), pp. 266-270. For their later history, see Wedmore
- ^ One of them is described in the inventory as "nr. 5 Een gedootverwde dito van Simon de Vlieger". ("ditto" refers to the subject of the painting listed under "nr. 4 Een gedootverwde see van den Overleden" = Jan van der Capelle. The word "onvolledig" means literally "not complete" in this case it means probably " gedoodverfd" (dead colour: the first layers of paints –fairly monotone in shade- applied by the artist). Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie RKD/Netherlands Institute for Art History
- Schenkenschansafter de Vlieger and a model (?) (167)
- ^ Details variously from Grove, MacLaren, Slive and Slive on Rembrandt drawings; Crenshaw, 162, note 14. The inventory was first printed by Bredius in 1898, and is reprinted in Russell's monograph.
- ^ Art Tribune Archived 19 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine Mauritshuis acquisition
- ^ MMA
- ^ Artcyclopedia
References
- Richard Green Gallery, A Winter Landscape and biography
- "Grove", Russell Margarita, Jan van de Cappelle in Grove Art Online, accessed April 1, 2010
- ISBN 0-947645-99-3
- Michel, Emil, Rembrandt, His Life, his Work, and his Time, Heinemann, 1894
- ISBN 0-300-07451-4
Further reading
- Russell, Margarita. Jan van de Cappelle 1624/6-1679, Lewis, Leigh-on-Sea, 1975 ISBN 978-0-85317-029-7