Albert van Ouwater ( 1410/1415 – 1475) was one of the earliest artists of

Early Netherlandish painting Early Netherlandish painting, traditionally known as the Flemish Primitives, refers to the work of artists active in the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands during the 15th- and 16th-century Northern Renaissance period. It flourished especiall ...

working in the Northern

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

, as opposed to

Flanders Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, ...

in the South of the region.

Biography

He was probably born in

Oudewater Oudewater () is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands. History The origin of the town of Oudewater is obscure and no information has been found concerning the first settlement of citizens. It is also difficult to recover the name of Oud ...

, and is mentioned by

Karel van Mander Karel van Mander (I) or Carel van Mander I (May 1548 – 2 September 1606) was a Flemish painter, poet, art historian and art theoretician, who established himself in the Dutch Republic in the latter part of his life. He is mainly remembe ...

(1604) as a reputable painter at the time in which he lived.Albert van Ouwater
in

's ''

Schilder-boeck or is a book written by the Flemish writer and painter Karel van Mander first published in 1604 in Haarlem in the Dutch Republic, where van Mander resided. The book is written in 17th-century Dutch and its title is commonly translated into Engl ...

'', 1604, courtesy of the

Digital library for Dutch literature The Digital Library for Dutch Literature (Dutch: Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren or DBNL) is a website (showing the abbreviation as dbnl) about Dutch language and Dutch literature. It contains thousands of literary texts, second ...

According to Karel van Mander he was possibly a contemporary of

Jan van Eyck Jan van Eyck ( , ; – July 9, 1441) was a painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Northern Renaissance art. Ac ...

and had been the teacher of

Geertgen tot Sint Jans Geertgen tot Sint Jans (c. 1465 – c. 1495), also known as Geertgen van Haarlem, Gerrit van Haarlem, Gerrit Gerritsz, Gheertgen, Geerrit, Gheerrit, or any other diminutive form of Gerald, was an Early Netherlandish painter from the northern Low ...

, though he was quick to qualify this statement with the eye-witness account of an old man named '' Albert Simonsz'' who had been a pupil of

Jan Mostaert Jan Mostaert (c. 1475 – 1552/1553) was a Dutch Renaissance painter who is known mainly for his religious subjects and portraits. One of his most famous creations was the ''Landscape with an Episode from the Conquest of America''. There are ve ...

and claimed neither he nor Mostaert had ever even heard of this Albert van Ouwater or Geertgen tot Sint Jans. Van Mander highly commends an altarpiece by Van Ouwater in the principal church in

Haarlem Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English) is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland. Haarlem is situated at the northern edge of the Randstad, one of the most populated metropoli ...

, the Grotekerk or

Sint-Bavokerk The Grote Kerk or St.-Bavokerk is a Reformed tradition, Reformed Protestant church and former Catholic cathedral located on the central market square (Grote Markt (Haarlem), Grote Markt) in the Netherlands, Dutch city of Haarlem. Another Haarlem c ...

, representing St. Peter and St. Paul, in which the figures are carefully and correctly designed, and richly coloured. Van Mander posits Van Ouwater as the founder of the Haarlem school of painting, making him the first major Dutch (as opposed to Flemish) artist. According to Van Mander,

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

painting was a particular specialty of this Dutch school, although none of Van Ouwater's surviving works exhibit this tendency. Van Ouwater seems to have been a contemporary of

Dirk Bouts Dieric Bouts (born c. 1415 – 6 May 1475) was an Early Netherlandish painter. Bouts may have studied under Rogier van der Weyden, and his work was influenced by van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck. He worked in Leuven from 1457 (or possibly earlier) ...

in mid-15th-century Haarlem, and

may have been his pupil. Van Mander describes another picture by Van Ouwater of a more extensive composition, the ''Resurrection of Lazarus'', which had been taken by the Spaniards back to Spain after the

siege of Haarlem The siege of Haarlem was an episode of the Eighty Years' War. From 11 December 1572 to 13 July 1573 an army of Philip II of Spain laid bloody siege to the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands, whose loyalties had begun wavering during the pre ...

as war booty, but which he saw the copy of that had been greatly admired by

Maarten van Heemskerck Maarten van Heemskerck or ''Marten Jacobsz Heemskerk van Veen'' (1 June 1498 - 1 October 1574) was a Dutch portrait and religious painter, who spent most of his career in Haarlem. He was a pupil of Jan van Scorel, and adopted his teacher's Ital ...

. This has been identified as the painting now in the

Staatliche Museen The Berlin State Museums (german: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) are a group of institutions in Berlin, Germany, comprising seventeen museums in five clusters, several research institutes, libraries, and supporting facilities. They are overseen ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. This is the only widely accepted attribution to Van Ouwater, although many scholars also credit him with the small, fragmentary ''Head of a Donor'' in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York. Max J. Friedländer also gave him a ''Virgin and Child'' (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), but this painting has also been associated with the early works of Dirk Bouts (the Metropolitan Museum now considers it the work of a German painter influenced by the Haarlem school). Less convincingly, Albert Châtelet adds a pair of altar wings with ''St. John the Baptist'' and ''St. Michael'' (both in the Capilla Real, Granada) to Van Ouwater's ''œuvre''. According to the RKD he was also known as Albertus Veteraquinas, and the art historian W.R. Valentiner identified him as identical to the painters Master of Bellaert and

Master of the Tiburtine Sibyl The Master of the Tiburtine Sibyl ( fl. 1475–1495) was an unidentified Early Netherlandish painter, probably from Haarlem, named after ''The Tiburtine Sibyl meets Augustus'', a work in the Städel in Frankfurt. Identification The artist w ...

References

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