RKD STUDIES

Dirck van Hoogstraten’s interest in Rembrandt’s work will have had a decisive effect on Samuel’s choice to undertake the second phase of his training with him in Amsterdam. When Samuel entered the house on Amsterdam Breestraat, Rembrandt had just delivered his largest and most prestigious commission up to that time: the group portrait of the civic guard company under the command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, known today as the Night Watch [4]. The unconventional composition, full of evocation of movement and sound, must have impressed viewers, including the young Van Hoogstraten. Especially because the life-size figures, particularly the captain and lieutenant with their outstretched hand and foreshortened weapon, are rendered as if they are walking right out of the painting. This illusionism of Rembrandt’s seems to have laid an important foundation for Samuel’s later interest in painting illusions.¹ And the Night Watch was not the only artwork to play a role here. While Rembrandt was working on that commission, between 1639 and 1642, he extensively explored the limits of physical painting. This quest sometimes yielded quite extreme results, as can be seen in the 1641 portraits of his neighbours Agatha Bas and Nicolaes van Bambeeck, in which it seems as if the sitters are moving forward out of their own painted frames, into the world of the viewer [5][6]. After the completion of the Night Watch, illusionism remained a priority in Rembrandt’s studio and Samuel was a direct witness. A painting he saw Rembrandt make in 1646 refers very directly to the iconic story about the two Ancient Greek painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius [7]. Parrhasius fooled Zeuxis, a man and art connoisseur, when the latter tried to push aside a piece of cloth to reveal Parrhasius’ painting: in fact, the cloth turned out to be painted. This story will certainly have been discussed by Rembrandt with his pupils. It not only translated into the incorporation of an illusionistic curtain in his painting, but also in an important drawing by his pupil [8].

4
Rembrandt
Civic guardsmen of Amsterdam under command of Banninck Cocq, dated 1642
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. SK-C-5

7
Rembrandt or studio of Rembrandt
Holy Family, dated 1646
Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel), inv./cat.nr. GK 240

On the basis of Samuel van Hoogstraten’s paintings that stem from his apprenticeship with Rembrandt [12][13][14], it becomes clear how he increasingly adopted his teacher’s artistic imagery. They also highlight how Samuel van Hoogstraten gravitated towards geometric and stylized forms, including almond-shaped eyes. He also seems to have liked to use a whitish semi-transparent glazing layer on top of a red underlayer, which also appears in father Dirck’s work.² These aspects can be found in a painting dating from the year 1645, which must have been created under Rembrandt’s care, and was apparently so successful as a Rembrandtesque product that it was signed by Rembrandt [9]. The painting must have been a translation by Van Hoogstraten of an illusionistic scene painted by Rembrandt in 1641: a girl in a picture frame, who appears to be moving forward, grasping her own picture frame in the process [10]. Possibly, this painting was still in Rembrandt’s studio when Van Hoogstraten came to work there, or he was able to draw inspiration from a copy after it that produced in the Rembrandt studio.³ In the same year, 1645, Rembrandt himself also painted a young woman leaning out of an opening – very likely in response to Van Hoogstraten’s painting [11]. But Rembrandt’s interest and development had advanced in the meantime, and he went a step further in challenging himself spatially and artistically, by creating a gradual recession into space, in the figure and in the windowsill.

It is quite remarkable that several paintings and drawings exist from Samuel’s apprenticeship with Rembrandt, which he signed with his own name. Whereas the drawings are narrative scenes, the paintings are two self-portraits and the possible portrait of his brother Jan. Personal works of art, in other words. The 1644 Self-portrait in Museum Bredius [12] and the Self-portrait with medallion in the Princely Collections Liechtenstein dating from 1645, are so strongly influenced by Rembrandt that they will almost undoubtedly have been produced in his context. But the 1644 portrait of Jan does not relate in its cluttered composition to Rembrandt’s work of the period, and may well have been produced outside Rembrandt’s studio [13], aimed at Van Hoogstraten’s own family circle in Dordrecht. Samuel will have returned to his family in Dordrecht from time to time, to his father’s studio where brother Jan was developing his painting skills as well. After all, Samuel himself later calls Jan his first pupil, and it is possible that Samuel indeed taught him in between his own training in Amsterdam.⁴

Around 1646, Van Hoogstraten seems to have advanced to the position of an assistant in Rembrandt’s studio, taking some newly arrived pupils under his wing.⁵ Willem Drost (1633-1659) appears to have been one of them.⁶ A portrait by Van Hoogstraten dating from c. 1647 supposedly depicts the young Drost. The painting has a strong Rembrandtesque appearance, representing a serious reaction to Rembrandt’s ambitious Italianising and illusionistic self-portrait type of 1639 and 1640, in which the illusionism of the elbow protruding from the picture plane plays an important role. Also dating from 1647 is a strongly Rembrandtesque history painting by Van Hoogstraten, an Adoration of the shepherds [14]. The composition is based on Rembrandt’s painting of the same theme from 1646, which is part of the so-called ‘Passion Series’ – actually a series on the life of Christ – that was owned by stadholder Frederik Hendrik (1584-1647) and on which Rembrandt had been working for more than a decade by then. Van Hoogstraten saw this painting take shape and it must have formed a subject of conversation in the studio. He even made a drawn copy after it and subsequently prepared his own painted version in other sketches, including a sheet preserved today in the Hamburger Kunsthalle. It shows how Van Hoogstraten freely based the arrangement with kneeling shepherds and the motif of a lantern on Rembrandt’s example. But also, how he experimented with a different pose for Mary, which he then discarded to follow Rembrandt’s example quite closely. Although Van Hoogstraten’s painting has a strong Rembrandtesque feel to it, the figures, composition and lighting effect show striking clumsiness in several respects. The Christ child has a particularly small head in proportion and the location of the light source is unclear. Apart from the concentration of light around the child, light also strikes the standing shepherdess from the left, suggesting a source of light located outside the picture plane. Given Rembrandt’s interest throughout his life in all aspects of light, reflections and scattering of light, this illogical element is quite remarkable - especially when considering both artists’ ambition to achieve convincing representations of reality.

Also dating from 1647 is a bona fide commissioned portrait of the married couple Jan Cornelisz. Vijgeboom and Anneke Joosten Boogaart in the garden of their country house near Dubbeldam, close to Dordrecht [15]. The attention to landscape, perspective and architecture at the heart of this work was something Van Hoogstraten continued to cultivate in the following decades. And where even this painting still shows a somewhat awkward execution, it also shows him expanding, developing and refining his skills.

8
attributed to Samuel van Hoogstraten
Death of the Virgin, c. 1646
Paris, Fondation Custodia - Collection Frits Lugt, inv./cat.nr. 1971-T.51

9
attributed to Samuel van Hoogstraten or studio of Rembrandt
Young woman at an open half-door, c. 1645
Chicago (Illinois), The Art Institute of Chicago, inv./cat.nr. 1894.1022

10
Rembrandt or circle of Rembrandt
Girl in a picture frame, dated 1641
Warsaw, Zamek Królewski w Warszawie, inv./cat.nr. ZKW/3906

11
Rembrandt
Girl at a window, dated 1645
Dulwich (Southwark), Dulwich Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. DPG163