Herman Hermansz Saftleven
(1609 - 1685) |
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Genre Subjects, Mythology Narratives, Classic Landscapes, Etchings Art Work
| Name: |
Herman Hermansz Saftleven |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Rotterdam |
| Nationality: |
Dutch |
| Birth: |
1609 |
| Death: |
1685 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Genre Subjects, Mythology Narratives, Classic Landscapes, Etchings |
| Medium: |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
Baroque |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
| Although he produced some peasant subjects in the manner of his brother, Cornells, early in his career (1634-37), Herman Saftleven is best known for his landscapes, to which he devoted himself for most of his life. Of his landscapes, those from the 1650s on have elicited the most interest, for they reflect the diverse interpretation of nature that the revivalist approach to landscape painting in the last decades of the seventeenth century. For inspiration, Herman turned back to artists of nearly a century earlier; he was particularly influenced by the Flemish manner of Jan Brueghel the Elder* and Roc Ian t Savery.* Herman also practiced on occasion the pen drawing on panel technique favored early in the century by Willem van de Velde the Elder, to create complicated rocky forms with minute details. The younger son of the painter Herman Hermansz Saftleven (d. 1627) and grandson of a painter of the same name, Herman was born in Rotterdam and probably first studied with his older brother, Cornelis. He moved to Utrecht in 1632 (the next year he married) and evidently remained in Utrecht for the rest of his life, leaving infrequently, as for a trip along the Rhine and the Moselle to Basel. In 1634 and 1635 he and Cornelis worked on the portrait of the Godard van Reede family, and in 1635 Herman produced one of four scenes from Guarino's Pastor Fido. Several peasant interiors in his brother's manner survive from the years 1634 through 1637. In 1639 he bought a house in Utrecht. Herman was also active in his guild, serving as "overman" in the years 1655, 1656, and 1665 and as dean in 1657, 1658, 1666, and 1667. That year he may have lived briefly in Elberfeld. He died in Utrecht in January 1685 and was buried in the Buurkerk. Herman's early landscapes (of the 1630s) relate to the works of Jan van Goyen, Abraham Bloemaert, and Pieter de Molijn; he turned to the Italian ate approach of Cornelis van Poelenburgh and Jan Both in the 1640s, a period which sometimes shows a remarkably original treatment of forest interiors. Note, for example, the beautiful Riders Resting in a Forest (signed and dated 1647, The Hague, Museum Bredius). In the 1650s he turned to Brueghel and Savery (whose drawings he sometimes copied), producing largely imaginative landscapes - generally consisting of panoramas which sometimes incorporate observations made during his Rhineland journey. A good example is River Landscape (signed and dated 1650, Frankfurt am Main, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut). Smaller in scale and filled with minute detail, these later paintings are at once descriptive and imaginary, reviving the miniaturist vision of a century earlier. Besides his paintings and drawings, Herman produced a number of etchings (dating from 1640 to 1669), many of which echo his painterly interests but some of which represent another facet of his descriptive inclinations since they depict panoramic views of Dutch towns. Some of the prints are large and impressive compositions based on three or four printed plates. These views were praised in one of several of Joost van den Vondel's poems about Herman. Herman's many surviving drawings are also highly valued. His pupils included Johannes Vorsterman, Jan van Bunnik, and Willem van Bemmel. |
Samples of Work
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