Early 18th Century Dutch Criticism

Abstract

Gerard de Lairesse, who was born in Liege in 1640, is the best representative of the dominant taste in Dutch art and art theory around the end of the 17 th century. His early biographers emphasized his precocity and that he received excellent training from his father, Renier, and the painter Bertholet Flemal, who had worked in Italy and France. He was instructed in the beauty of the ancients and the Italian masters, and was taught languages to enable him to read the sources for the subjects of his paintings. In 1665 the south Netherlander arrived in Amsterdam where he remained until his death in 1711.1 He had tremendous success there as a painter of the walls and ceilings in patrician homes, as well as an etcher of mythological, religious and historical themes. In 1667 he was given the rights of citizenship in Amsterdam; in 1668 he was in contact with Andries Pels, and in the following year, with Pels and Lodewijk Meyer he founded the litherary society Nil volentibus arduum. His contemporaries believed he had every virtue of a learned painter — Sandrart reports that he spent one day a week at his music. His 18th century critics gave him the highest praise: Descamps writes of him as the Voussin Hollandais 2 and Winckelmann called his Stratonice “ein Werk welches unter die ersten in der Welt kann gesetzt werden.”3