Allart van Everdingen
Encyclopedia

Allaert van Everdingen (ˈɑlaːrt vɐn ˈeːvər.ˌdɪŋə(n), bapt. 18 June 1621 - 8 November 1675 (buried)), was a Dutch Golden Age
Dutch Golden Age
The Golden Age was a period in Dutch history, roughly spanning the 17th century, in which Dutch trade, science, military and art were among the most acclaimed in the world. The first half is characterised by the Eighty Years' War till 1648...

 painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 and printmaker in etching
Etching
Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...

 and mezzotint
Mezzotint
Mezzotint is a printmaking process of the intaglio family, technically a drypoint method. It was the first tonal method to be used, enabling half-tones to be produced without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple...

.

Biography

Van Everdingen was born at Alkmaar
Alkmaar
Alkmaar is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of Noord Holland. Alkmaar is well known for its traditional cheese market. For tourists, it is a popular cultural destination.-History:...

, the son of a government clerk at Alkmaar. He and his older brothers, the painters Jan and Caesar van Everdingen
Caesar van Everdingen
Cesar Pietersz, or Cesar Boetius van Everdingen , older brother of Allart van Everdingen and Jan van Everdingen, was a Dutch Golden Age portrait and history painter.-Biography:...

, according to Arnold Houbraken
Arnold Houbraken
Arnold Houbraken was a Dutch painter and writer from Dordrecht, now remembered mainly as a biographer of artists from the Dutch Golden Age. He had ten children. His son Jacobus Houbraken was an engraver of portraits and book illustrations, including books by his father...

, were taught by Roelandt Savery at Utrecht
Utrecht (city)
Utrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands with a population of 312,634 on 1 Jan 2011.Utrecht's ancient city centre features...

. Allaert moved in 1645 to Haarlem
Haarlem
Haarlem is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland, the northern half of Holland, which at one time was the most powerful of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic...

, where he studied under Pieter de Molijn
Pieter de Molijn
Pieter de Molijn was a Dutch Golden Age painter and engraver born in England.-Biography:He was baptized in the Dutch Reformed Austin Friars church in London. Little is known of his early training, but he probably traveled to Italy and in 1616 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. He...

, and finally settled about 1657 at Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

, where he died in 1675.

Style

It would be difficult to find a greater contrast than that presented by the works of Savery and Everdingen. Savery inherited the brilliant style of the Brueghel
Brueghel
Brueghel or Bruegel was the name of several Dutch/Flemish painters from the same family line:* Pieter Bruegel the Elder — The most famous member of the family and the only one to sign his paintings as 'Bruegel' without the H....

s, which he carried into the 17th century; whilst Everdingen realized the large and effective system of coloured and powerfully shaded landscape which charactarises the precursors of Rembrandt. Savery was successful in selling his exotic plants and animals, many of which were brought in from the Dutch East India Company
Dutch East India Company
The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia...

 (VOC). This fascination with the exotic is probably what inspired Allaert to travel himself, while it is quite within the range of probability that he acquired the elements of landscape painting from Molijn. Pieter de Molijn
Pieter de Molijn
Pieter de Molijn was a Dutch Golden Age painter and engraver born in England.-Biography:He was baptized in the Dutch Reformed Austin Friars church in London. Little is known of his early training, but he probably traveled to Italy and in 1616 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke. He...

, a Londoner by birth, lived from in Haarlem 1624 to 1661 and taught drawing there.

Norwegian waterfalls

In 1644 Everdingen travelled to Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 and Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

, a trip that was to have profound consequences on his art. According to Houbraken
Houbraken
Houbraken may refer to:*Arnold Houbraken , Dutch biographer of artists, and engraver*Jacobus Houbraken , Dutch engraver, son of Arnold Houbraken...

, his visit to Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 was unscheduled, but occurred when his ship, en route to the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...

, ran into a heavy storm and moored there for shelter. In the manner of Frans Post
Frans Post
Frans Janszoon Post was a Dutch painter. He was the first European artist to paint landscapes of America. In 1636 he traveled to Dutch Brazil at the invitation of Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen.- Biography :...

, Everdingen took advantage of this mishap by making sketches of the Norwegian landscape, which would have seemed very exotic to his Dutch countrymen. His annotated drawings document visits to the south-east Norwegian coast and to Bohusland and the Göteborg area in western Sweden. These sketches, which he later painted in his studio, became very popular, and though now scarce, exhibit a broad and sweeping mode of execution, differing but slightly from that transmitted at the dawn of the 17th century from Jan van Goyen to Salomon van Ruysdael. He had returned to the Netherlands by 21 February 1645, when he married Janneke Cornelisdr Brouwers in Haarlem. He died in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

.

Haarlem school of landscape artists

Molijn wielded his own influence on his gifted disciple, but the school of landscape painters in Haarlem brought forth many young, talented artists who incorporated the tonal qualities of van Goyen. This can be seen in the development of Isaac van Ostade
Isaac van Ostade
Isaac van Ostade was a Dutch genre and landscape painter.-Biography:Van Ostade began his studies under his brother, Adriaen, with whom he remained till 1641, when he started his own practice...

, who abandoned the genre techniques of his brother Adriaen van Ostade
Adriaen van Ostade
Adriaen van Ostade was a Dutch Golden Age painter of genre works.-Life:...

 for the broader landscapes of the Ruisdael family. In Utrecht Allert would have also met Savery's nephew and namesake, the landscape artist and engraver Roelant Roghman
Roelant Roghman
Roelant Roghman was a Dutch Golden Age painter and engraver.-Biography:Roghman was born in Amsterdam, the son of the engraver Henrick Lambertsz Roghman and Maria Jacobs Savery. His mother was a daughter of the Savery family, and Roghman became a student of his namesake and great-uncle, Roelant...

, who probably returned with him on his trips to Alkmaar
Alkmaar
Alkmaar is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of Noord Holland. Alkmaar is well known for its traditional cheese market. For tourists, it is a popular cultural destination.-History:...

, where he made many prints. Alkmaar, itself a busy trading place near Texel
Texel
Texel is a municipality and an island in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is the biggest and most populated of the Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea, and also the westernmost of this archipelago, which extends to Denmark...

 island, had little of the picturesque for an artist except polders and dunes or waves and sky. Accordingly we find Allaert at first a painter of coast scenery. But on one of his expeditions he is said to have been cast ashore in Norway, and during the repairs of his ship he visited the inland valleys, and thus gave a new course to his art.

Works

In early pieces he cleverly represents the sea in motion under varied, but mostly clouded, aspects of sky. Their general intonation is strong and brown, and effects are rendered in a powerful key, but the execution is much more uniform than that of Jacob Ruysdael
Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruysdael
Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael was a Dutch landscape painter.-Life:A native of Haarlem, he appears to have studied under his father Isaak van Ruysdael, a landscape painter, though other authorities place him as the pupil of Berghem and of Allart van Everdingen...

. A dark scud lowering on a rolling sea near the walls of Flushing characterizes Everdingens Mouth of the Schelde in the Hermitage at St Petersburg. Storm is the marked feature of sea-pieces in the Staedel or Robartes collections; and a strand with wreckers at the foot of a cliff in the Munich Pinakothek may be a reminiscence of personal adventure in Norway. But the Norwegian coast was studied in calms as well as in gales; and a fine canvas at Munich shows fishermen on a still and sunny day taking herrings to a smoking hut at the foot of a Norwegian crag.

The earliest of Everdingen's sea-pieces bears the date of 1640. After 1640 we meet with nothing but representations of inland scenery, and particularly of Norwegian valleys, remarkable alike for wildness and a decisive depth of tone. The masters favorite theme is a fall in a glen, with mournful fringes of pines interspersed with birch, and log-huts at the base of rocks and craggy slopes. The water tumbles over the foreground, so as to entitle the painter to the name of inventor of cascades. It gives Everdingen his character as a precursor of Jacob Ruysdael in a certain form of landscape composition; but though very skillful in arrangement and clever in effects, Everdingen remains much more simple in execution; he is much less subtle in feeling or varied in touch than his great and incomparable countryman.

Five of Everdingen's cascades are in the museum of Copenhagen alone: of these, one is dated 1647, another 1649. In the Hermitage at St Petersburg is a fine example of 1647; another in the Pinakothek at Munich was finished in 1656. One of his best-known masterpieces is the Norwegian glen belonging to Lord Listowel. Of his etchings and drawings there are much larger and more numerous specimens in England than elsewhere. Being a collector as well as an engraver and painter, he brought together a large number of works of all kinds and masters; and the sale of these by his heirs at Amsterdam on 11 March 1676 gives an approximate clue to the date of the painters death.

His two brothers, Jan and Caesar
Caesar van Everdingen
Cesar Pietersz, or Cesar Boetius van Everdingen , older brother of Allart van Everdingen and Jan van Everdingen, was a Dutch Golden Age portrait and history painter.-Biography:...

, were both good painters according to Houbraken, though Jan had a civil job that kept him from his hobby.

Collections

Van Everdingen is represented in the following collections, among others: Rijksmuseum
Rijksmuseum
The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam or simply Rijksmuseum is a Dutch national museum in Amsterdam, located on the Museumplein. The museum is dedicated to arts, crafts, and history. It has a large collection of paintings from the Dutch Golden Age and a substantial collection of Asian art...

, Amsterdam; Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands; National Gallery
National gallery
The National Gallery is an art gallery on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom.National Gallery may also refer to:*Armenia: National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan*Australia:**National Gallery of Australia, Canberra...

, London; Courtauld Institute of Art
Courtauld Institute of Art
The Courtauld Institute of Art is a self-governing college of the University of London specialising in the study of the history of art. The Courtauld is one of the premier centres for the teaching of art history in the world; it was the only History of Art department in the UK to be awarded a top...

, London; The Wallace Collection, London; Fitzwilliam Museum
Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge, located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge, England. It receives around 300,000 visitors annually. Admission is free....

 at the University of Cambridge; The Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...

, Paris; Musée des beaux-arts
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen
The musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen is an art museum in Rouen, northern France. Founded in 1801 by Napoleon I, its current building was built between 1880 and 1888 and completely renovated in 1994...

, Rouen; Université de Liège Collections; Kunsthistorisches Museum
Kunsthistorisches Museum
The Kunsthistorisches Museum is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on Ringstraße, it is crowned with an octagonal dome...

, Vienna; National Museum in Warsaw; Hermitage Museum
Hermitage Museum
The State Hermitage is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums of the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been opened to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display,...

, Saint Petersburg; National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan, Armenia; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, USA.
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