RKD STUDIES

It was with the investigation of pictorial illusion that Samuel van Hoogstraten found his metier. There he was driven by a spirit of experiment and innovation, sparked by his period of tutelage under Rembrandt. Initially, he did follow his teacher’s style, embracing many aspects of it, in particular strong light effects and a muted palette dominated by earth colours. But already early on he exercised an individual preference for smoother surfaces and abstracted forms, often with rounded contours, which give his figures a geometric quality. Dynamism was another penchant of his, presented in complex compositions, with strong rhythmic effect and boldly presented forms. Van Hoogstraten did incorporate effects of texture and open brushwork, which he studied from Rembrandt, but in a restrained and more controlled fashion. These he applied to great effect in innovative illusionistic works, in particular his letterboards, creating depth in a shallow space to deceive the eye. In this, he chose an aspect of Rembrandt’s work from the 1640s that appealed to his personal focus on the world of appearances and ‘honourable’ deception as paths to studying the visible world, and to advancing socially as an artist (opsteygeren). In his illusionistic works Van Hoogstraten employed a strong effect of raking light (schamping), to accentuate form and space. He applied his broad repertoire of style and technique to great effect in architectural illusions as well, in portraiture, and later on also in elegant interior scenes.

The chronological analysis of Van Hoogstraten’s work in the present study reveals that he generally moved on from one ‘project’ to the next: letterboards, perspective views, genre interiors, and then late in his career, history paintings. Often he took pains to incorporate a wide range of subject matter (objects, landscape, architecture) in a given artwork, even when the main theme was well-defined. By contrast, he achieved only limited success in history painting but nonetheless took on the challenge and sought to make his mark there as well, as seen in a striking late burst of activity. In the end, his ambition lay with universality, and his work illustrates his pupil Arnold Houbraken’s (1660-1719) striking account of his competitiveness in seeking to beat specialists in various subject matter at their own games.¹ Ironically, Van Hoogstraten was better off, with his iconic illusionistic works, in which he hit all the right notes. He downplayed them in his treatise, but this was after he had resumed history painting. At the time, however, the deceptive letter boards and perspective paintings were like history paintings, with their complex compositions, striking innovations, sophisticated references, and lavish execution. They remain Van Hoogstraten’s greatest and most striking achievements, earning him lasting fame as an important Dutch artist of the seventeenth-century, and a following that reaches into the present day.