Claes Jacobsz van der Heck - A view of Egmond Abbey

Claes Jacobsz van der Heck (Nicolaes Jacobsz van der Heck) (c.1575 in

Alkmaar Alkmaar () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands, located in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Holland. Alkmaar is well known fo ...

– 1652 in Alkmaar), was a

Dutch Golden Age The Dutch Golden Age ( ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands which roughly lasted from 1588, when the Dutch Republic was established, to 1672, when the '' Rampjaar'' occurred. During this period, Dutch trade, scientific development ...

painter.

Biography

Claes Jacobsz van der Heck was the son of Jacob Dircksz (c. 1534–1608) and Adriana (died 1591) van der Heck, and the grand-nephew of painter

Maarten van Heemskerck Maarten van Heemskerck (born Maerten Jacobsz van Veen; 1 June 1498 – 1 October 1574), also known as Marten Jacobsz Heemskerk van Veen, was a Dutch portrait and religious painter, who spent most of his career in Haarlem. He was a pupil of Jan ...

. According to

Hessel Miedema Hessel Miedema (21 January 1929, Sneek – 14 April 2019) was a leading Dutch art historian and the world authority on Karel van Mander. Biography He was born in Sneek, but grew up in Amsterdam, where he studied art history at the University of A ...

's notes on this family in his translation of Karel van Mander'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 En ...

, "Jacques van der Heck" (or Jacob Dircksz) was a son of Maarten van Heemskerck's sister Neeltje and her husband Dirk van der Heck. Jacques' son "Niclaes" was Claes Jacobsz van der Heck. Heemskerck had disinherited "another nephew" (presumably a Dirk Dirksz, the later father of Claes Dircksz van der Heck), and left a portion in his will to Jacob Dircksz. According to

Karel van Mander Karel van Mander (I) or Carel van Mander IKarel van Mander
at the Netherlands Institute for Art History ...

, he was a good painter, a disciple of

Jan Nagel Johan Georg "Jan" Nagel (born 20 June 1939) is a Dutch politician who was a member of the Labour Party, and later formed his own parties. He is currently in the Pensioners' Party 50PLUS. Nagel started his career in his twenties on VARA-Radi ...

, and specialized in landscapes.Niclaes van der Heck
''van t'gheslacht van Marten Hemskerck, en Discipel van Ian Naghel, wesende een goet Schilder, besonder in Lantschap'' (Niclaes van der Heck, family of Marten Hemskerck, pupil of Ian Naghel, was a good landscape painter) on the last page of

Karel van Mander Karel van Mander (I) or Carel van Mander IKarel van Mander
at the Netherlands Institute for Art History ...

's ''Schilderboeck'', 1604, courtesy of the Digital library for Dutch literature According to Houbraken who mentions that he was listed on the last page of the

, his works hung in the Alkmaar city hall when he was writing, and he mentions landscape views of

Egmond Abbey Egmond Abbey or St. Adalbert's Abbey (, ''Sint-Adelbertabdij'') is a Rule of St. Benedict, Benedictine monastery of the Congregation of the Annunciation, situated in Egmond-Binnen, in the municipality of Bergen, North Holland, Bergen, in the Neth ...

, a

Judgment of Solomon The Judgement of Solomon is a story from the Old Testament in which Solomon ruled between two women who both claimed to be the mother of a child. Solomon ordered the baby be cut in half, with each woman to receive one half. The first woman accept ...

, portraits, and other historical allegories. Claes Jacobsz specialized in views of abbeys and castles. Regarding Egmond, "Dr. S. de Vries suggests that van der Heck's prototype was probably the view by Gilles de Saens in the Townhall,

Zottegem Zottegem (, Sotteghem and Sottegem in older English and French language sources) is a city and municipality located in Belgium and more particularly in Flanders, in the province of East Flanders. The municipality comprises the town of Zottegem pr ...

." Claes Jacobsz helped set up the Alkmaar

Guild of Saint Luke The Guild of Saint Luke was the most common name for a city guild for painters and other artists in early modern Europe, especially in the Low Countries. They were named in honor of the Evangelist Luke, the patron saint of artists, who was iden ...

in 1631–32.Nicolaas vander Hek Biography
in ''De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen'' (1718) by

Arnold Houbraken Arnold Houbraken (28 March 1660 – 14 October 1719) was a Dutch people, Dutch Painting, painter and writer from Dordrecht, now remembered mainly as a biographer of Dutch Golden Age painters. Life Houbraken was sent first to learn ''threadt ...

, courtesy of the Digital library for Dutch literature According to the RKD much of his work hangs in the

Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar Stedelijk Museum Alkmaar is a city museum located in the center of Alkmaar on the Canadaplein (Canada Square). The museum is devoted to presenting and preserving the cultural history of Alkmaar and the surrounding region. History In 1873 the museu ...

.Claes Jacobsz van der Heck
in the

RKD The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: ), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center in the world. The center specializes in document ...

Several of his landscapes of Egmond hang in that museum and one of them shows a landscape of

Egmond aan Zee Egmond aan Zee () is a village on the North Sea coast in the Netherlands, Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Bergen, North Holland, Bergen, about 9 km west of Alkmaar. Egmond aan Zee was a separate municipali ...

as it looked before it was washed to sea in 1717. Known as the "master of Alkmaar", Claes Jacobsz also designed and created coats of arms and guild-banners. He was second cousin to landscape painter Claes Dircksz van der Heck, who made similar landscapes and probably worked in the same workshop. According to Houbraken, Claes Jacobsz was the father of Marten Heemskerck van der Heck.MARTEN HEEMSKERK vander HEK, Zoon van Nicolaas vander Hek
in ''De groote schouburgh'' Other offspring were the notary Jacob Claesz van der Heck and the apothecary Cornelis van der Heck.

References

External links

Judgement of Salomon by Claes Jacobsz. van der Heck
in the

Image database
(search term: Heck) of

shows Judgement of Solomon by Heck, completed in 1616
Claes Jacobsz van der Heck
on

Artnet Artnet.com is an art market website. It is operated by Artnet Worldwide Corporation, which has headquarters in New York City. It is owned by Artnet AG, a German publicly-traded company based in Berlin that is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Ex ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heck, Claes Jacobsz Van Der 1570s births 1652 deaths Dutch Golden Age painters Dutch male painters Painters from Alkmaar