Jan van der Vaart - Wooded Landscape with Trees and Figures

Jan van der Vaart or Jan van der Vaardt (name variations: John Van der Vaart, John Vander Vaart, Jan van der Waart) (c.1650 –1727) was a

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

painter and draughtsman of

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better r ...

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or human-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

s and

trompe-l'œil ; ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional surface. , which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving p ...

paintings and a

mezzotint Mezzotint is a monochrome printmaking process of the intaglio (printmaking), intaglio family. It was the first printing process that yielded half-tones without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple. Mezzo ...

artist who was active in England for most of his career. He was also an art restorer and art collector.Biographical details
in the

Netherlands Institute for Art History The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: ), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in document ...

Life

Van der Vaart was born in

Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English language, English) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the Provinces of the Nether ...

, where he trained with

Thomas Wijck Thomas Wijck (also Thomas Wijk, or Thomas Wyck; 1616–1677) was a Dutch painter of port views and genre paintings. Biography Wijck was born into an artist family and received his training from his father. He journeyed to Italy, presumably by 16 ...

. Van der Vaart is documented from 1674 onwards in London. Here he worked in the workshop of another Dutch immigrant,

Willem Wissing Willem Wissing, known in England as William Wissing (1656 – 10 September 1687), was a Dutch portrait artist who worked in England. Biography He was born in either Amsterdam or The Hague, and studied at The Hague under Willem Doudijns (1630� ...

, who was a pupil and former collaborator of the court portrait painter Sir

Peter Lely Sir Peter Lely (14 September 1618 – 30 November 1680) was a painter of Dutch origin whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court. He became a naturalised British subject and was kn ...

. Van der Vaart painted draperies and landscapes in the portraits of Wissing. After Wissing's death in 1687, van der Vaart continued his workshop. He collaborated on occasion with the German-born painter Johann Kerseboom. In 1713 van der Vaart sold off his collection and built a house in Covent Garden. He stopped painting and confined himself to the restoration of paintings because of his deteriorating eyesight. He died in London, a bachelor, and his nephew Arnold continued his restoration business.Horace Walpole, 'John Vander Vaart'
in: Anecdotes of painting in England, 1717-1797, p. 306 Portrait of a Violin by Jan van der Vaart

Portrait of a Violin by Jan van der Vaart

He was probably the teacher of the famous English mezzotint engraver John Smith (1652–1742).Richard Jeffree. "Smith, John (i)."
Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 14 Feb. 2014.

Work

He was a versatile painter and painted in a wide range of genres including flower still lifes, religious paintings, history paintings, landscapes, portraits and trompe-l'oeil still lives. According to Walpole he painted a trompe l'oeil of a violin on a door at

Chatsworth House Chatsworth House is a stately home in the Derbyshire Dales, north-east of Bakewell and west of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Chesterfield, England. The seat of the Duke of Devonshire, it has belonged to the House of Cavendish, Cavendish family si ...

. He is primarily known for his portraits and landscapes. A number of van der Vaard's portraits were engraved in mezzotint by

Bernard Lens Bernard Lens may refer to one of three British artists: * Bernard Lens I (1630–1707), probably from the Netherlands, also the writer of several religious tracts *Bernard Lens II (1659–1725), son of the former, mezzotint engraver * Bernard Lens I ...

for the print publisher Edward Cooper. Van der Vaart was himself one of the earliest practitioners of mezzotint in England and produced many prints after portraits made by portrait artists like Sir Peter Lely, Willem Wissing etc.Jan van der Vaart (1647-1721)
at the

National Portrait Gallery, London The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London that houses a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. When it opened in 1856, it was arguably the first national public gallery in the world th ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Vaart, Jan van der 1650s births 1727 deaths Dutch painters Dutch male painters Trompe-l'œil artists Painters from Haarlem