Gerrit van Honthorst Paintings

Gerard van Honthorst Biography

Also known as: Gerrit van Honthorst, Gerardo delle Notti, Gherardo della Notte, Gherardo Fiammingo, Ghirardo delle Notti, Monsù Giraud della notte.

Student of: Abraham Bloemaert (1564-1651).
Brother of: Herman van Honthorst (active 1620-1639), Willem van Honthorst (1594-1666).
Son of: Herman Gerritsz. van Honthorst (active 1611-).
Grandson of: Gerrit Huyghen van Honthorst (active 1579-).
Influenced by: Caravaggio (1571-1610).

HONTHORST, GERRIT VAN (1590-1656), Dutch painter of Utrecht, was brought up at the school of Bloemart, who exchanged the style of the Franckens for that of the pseudo-Italians at the beginning of the 16th century. Infected thus early with a mania which came to be very general in Holland, he went to Italy, where Gerrit van Honthorst copied the naturalism and eccentricities of Michelangelo da Caravaggio. Home again about 1614, after acquiring a considerable practice in Rome, Gerard van Honthorst set up a school at Utrecht which flourished exceedingly; and he soon became so fashionable that Sir Dudley Carleton, then English envoy at the Hague, recommended Gerard van Honthorst pictures to the earl of Arundel and Lord Dorchester. At the same time the queen of Bohemia, sister of Charles I and electress palatine, being an exile in Holland, gave him her countenance and asked him to teach her children drawing; and Honthorst, thus approved and courted, became known to Charles I, who invited him to England. There he painted several portraits, and a vast allegory, now at Hampton Court, of Charles and his queen as Diana and Apollo in the clouds receiving the duke of Buckingham as Mercury and guardian of the king of Bohemia's children. Charles I, whose taste was flattered alike by the energy of Rubens and the elegance of Van Dyck, was thus first captivated by the fanciful mediocrity of Honthorst, who though a poor executants had luckily for himself caught, as Lord Arundel said, much of the manner of Caravaggio's coloring, then so much esteemed at Rome. It was his habit to transmute every subject into a night scene, from the Nativity, for which there was warrant in the example of Correggio, to the penitence of the Magdalen, for which there was no warrant at all. But unhappily this caprice, though sublime in Allegri [Correggio] and Rembrandt, was but a phantasm in the hands of Honthorst, whose prosaic pencil was not capable of more than vulgar utterances, and Gerard van Honthorst pictures gained little from the repetition of these quaint vagaries. Sandrart gave the measure of his popularity at this period when Gerrit van Honthorst says that he had as many as twenty apprentices at one time, each of whom paid him a fee of 100 forms a year. In 1623 he was president of his guild at Utrecht. After that Gerrit van Honthorst went to England, returning to settle anew at Utrecht, where he married. His position amongst painters was acknowledged to be important, and in 1626 Gerard van Honthorst received a visit from Rubens, whom he painted as the honest man sought for and found by Diogenes Honthorst. In his home at Utrecht he succeeded in preserving the support of the English monarch, for whom he finished in 1631 a large Gerard van Honthorst picture of the king and queen of Bohemia and all their children. For Lord Dorchester about the same period he completed some illustrations of the Odyssey; for the king of Denmark he composed incidents of Danish history, of which one example remains in the gallery of Copenhagen.