With Rembrandt in Amsterdam
In 1642 or 1643, when Van Hoogstraten was only fifteen or sixteen years old, he left for Amsterdam. Rembrandt, who was famous both at home and abroad at the time, was the best imaginable teacher. He was an ‘inventive’ artist, Van Hoogstraten would later write in his Introduction.1 This description gives an impression of what he appreciated in Rembrandt: by ‘inventive’ he meant something like imaginative, with a talent to do things in a different way, to convince and push boundaries. One of these different things, no doubt, was illusionism, which Rembrandt experimented with during these years in particular [3].
In his Introduction, Van Hoogstraten discusses various art principles that Rembrandt excelled in, such as ‘fleshiness’ (depicting human skin in a natural way), ‘staggering’ and ‘grouping’ (to create order in a composition with many figures), ‘perceptibility’ (application of thick paint to enhance the suggestion of spatiality) and ‘density of the air’ (atmospheric perspective at a short distance).2 Van Hoogstraten advised young painters that, like actors, they should study emotions or the ‘urges of the soul’ in order to be able to depict them.3 Rembrandt also paid attention to stage acting.4 Remarkably, Van Hoogstraten’s earliest dated painting of 1644 shows a young man intently reading. On the table are paper scrolls: text scrolls for actors [4].
Van Hoogstraten must have done well: it seems that, after several years, he began to assist Rembrandt in teaching pupils.5 Rembrandt and Van Hoogstraten had different personalities, which was reflected in their relationships with other people. Rembrandt mainly dealt with artists and collectors, and did not shy away from confrontation. Van Hoogstraten, on the other hand, would often associate with poets and governors later in life. He seems to have had a more diplomatic character. Unlike Rembrandt, he also held important positions in society.
3
Rembrandt or studio of Rembrandt
Holy Family, dated 1646
Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel), inv./cat.nr. GK 240
4
Samuel van Hoogstraten
Portrait of a young man with vanitas-still life, dated 1644
Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, inv./cat.nr. 1386
Notes
1 Van Hoogstraten/Brusati 2021, p. 289 (Van Hoogstraten 1678, p. 257).
2 Ibid., pp. 263, 230, 333, and 296 respectively (Van Hoogstraten 1678, pp. 227-228, 190-191, 307-308, and 264).
3 Ibid., p. 156 (Van Hoogstraten 1678, p. 109).
4 Leonore van Sloten in Van Sloten/Runia/Maciesza 2024.
5 See Bikker 2005, p. 11 and De Witt 2020, p. 11, for instance.