Karel Dujardin
(1622 - 1678) |
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Portraiture, Historic Subjects, Landscapes, Animal pictures, and bambocciate (Roman Art Work
| Name: |
Karel Dujardin |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Amsterdam |
| Nationality: |
Dutch |
| Birth: |
1622 |
| Death: |
1678 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Portraiture, Historic Subjects, Landscapes, Animal pictures, and bambocciate (Roman |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
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| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
| Dutch. One of seventeenth-century Amsterdam's most appealing and influential painters of ltalianatc landscapes, Carel Dujardin deserves to be better appreciated. He was a gifted and versatile artist whose warmly lit landscapes are only the best-known facets of an oeuvre that included portraits, histories, landscapes, animal pictures, and bambocciate (Roman street scenes). Dujardin's sense of lighting, his ability to render and model form, and his delicacy of touch make his images memorable and pleasing, regardless of their subject. Dujardin's exact date and place of birth are undocumented. He is likely the son, and probably the pupil, of the painter Guilliam du Gardyn (Garddin) active in Amsterdam in 1647. One document says the artist was about fifty years old in 1672. Houbraken reports that Carel studied with Claes Berchem in Haarlem. Berchem was two years Card's senior and had returned to Holland in 1645. Dujardin may be identical with the Carel du Gardin in Amsterdam who is reported as a "coopman" or merchant. In the later 1640s he may have traveled to Italy, joining the Schildersbent in Rome, learning the style and subject matter of the Italians, and earning the nickname "Bokkebaart" (goatsbeard). He was back in Amsterdam by 1650 but left for Paris and, according to Houbraken, married Suzanna van Royen in Lyon. Some scholars assume he did not make his first Italian journey until 1650/2. By 1652 he is documented back in Amsterdam, where he married again and probably remained until 1655. In 1656 through 1658 he is recorded as a founding member of Picture, the artists' confraternity in The Hague. By 1659 he was back in Amsterdam and probably remained there until 1674. A signed work of the following year suggests he had returned to Rome by 1675, a trip that included a tour of North Africa with his collector friend, Jan Reynst. Houbraken tells us that Carel resettled in Italy and died in Venice in November 1678. Dujardin's earliest dated picture comes from 1646, but his development can best be traced from the 1650s. His Landscape with Cattle (signed and dated 1655) and Party of Charlatans in an Italian Landscape (dated 1657; both Paris, Louvre) show him responding to the work of Pieter van Laer,* Claes Berchem, Jan Asselijn* for his landscapes as well as staffage, and Paulus Potter* for his animals. Another group of pictures can be placed toward the end of 1650, when Dujardin was living in Amsterdam - they include A Soldiers Tale (New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery) and Young Woman Milking a Red Cow (signed and partially dated 165., Stockholm, National Museum), which have strikingly similar compositions and an equally similar use of large-scale figures and genrelike flavor. Solidly modeled, succinctly painted (not unlike Domenico Fetti* in some respects), Dujardin's pictures from this group gradually display a broader color range, richer palette, and more delicate brushmarks. By the 1660s, when he had returned to Amsterdam, Dujardin introduced large and ambitious history pictures into his oeuvre in keeping with prevailing tastes for such subjects in that city. His Conversion of St. Paul (Saul) (dated 1662, London, National Gallery) reflects his understanding of Cavaliere d'Arpino* as well as Antonio Tempesta. Its explosion of action and its refined figure types and gestures reveal how mannerism survived and became intertwined with the polished international style that gradually gained favor in Holland during the second half of the seventeenth century. From the same year comes his Return of the Holy Family from Egypt (signed, Detroit Institute of Art) in which the figures are again grouped in the foreground and, despite their landscape setting, are quite prominent in the picture. In gesture and action, these figures retain a classicizing feel that connects them with the French school. Card's Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness (signed, Sarasota, Florida, Ringling Museum of Art) is also grouped with his history pictures and demonstrates the importance of Guido Reni and Simon Vouet to his development. Besides his history pictures painted during the early 1660s, he continued to portray the bucolic pleasures of outdoor life in the Italian campagna. Good examples dated to this period in Dujardin's development are Young Shepherd Playing with His Dog (The Hague, Mauritshuis), Landscape with Cattle (The Hague, Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst), and Landscape with Cattle and Figures (signed and dated 1664, Birmingham, Barber Institute of Fine Arts). In these pictures Dujardin perfected his transcription of light and often evoked a sense of peaceful isolation within the vast expanses of wilderness. Comfortable with many kinds of commissions, Carel was responsible for tbe group portrait of the Regents of the Spinning House, Amsterdam (signed and dated 1669, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), now considered one of the better group portraits done in Holland late in the seventeenth century. Six years later (1675), Dujardin was back in Italy; he was one of the few Dutch painters to return there late in his life. Several pictures show that his style had changed by the 1670s, becoming increasingly artificial and contrived. His View of a Waterfall (dated 1673, The Hague, Mauritshuis) evokes the kind of pastorale Boucher would perfect several decades later. In 1675 he signed and dated his Peasant Travelers ("K. DV IARDIN FEC. ROMA," dated 1675, Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten), giving ample proof that he was once more back in Rome in that year. Its brightly lit figures, set against a wide and deep Italian panorama, no longer have the moody isolation of his earlier views; their numbers and their separation from the background by virtue of lighting and composition give the whole image a more decorative and less unified effect. From the year of Carel's death, 1678, comes the Riding School (signed, Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland), in which ihe stilted artifice he had begun to develop in the early 1670s has become even more pronounced. Dujardin's pupils include Willem Schellinks and Johannes Lingelbach. About forty etchings by Dujardin are known. He forms a significant link between Dutch art of the seventeenth century and the world of artifice and decoration that is so much a part of the eighteenth-century French aesthetic. |
Samples of Work
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