David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville ( The Hague, 18 July 1770 – Leiden, 9 January 1849) was a Dutch artist and art scholar. He was a draughtsman, lithographer, etcher, and portrait painter, and also wrote treatises on art, including the influential work ''Essai sur les signes inconditionnels dans l'art'' (Leiden, 1827). His 1815 painting of the jurist and statesman Johan Melchior Kemper is now part of the collection of the

Rijksmuseum The Rijksmuseum () is the national museum of the Netherlands dedicated to Dutch arts and history and is located in Amsterdam. The museum is located at the Museum Square in the borough of Amsterdam South, close to the Van Gogh Museum, the St ...

in Amsterdam. His 1801 etching ''Allegory'' may have been a direct visual inspiration for Paul Gauguin's ''

Spirit of the Dead Watching ''Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao tupapau)'' is an 1892 oil on burlap canvas painting by Paul Gauguin, depicting a nude Tahitian girl lying on her stomach. An old woman is seated behind her. Gauguin said the title may refer to either the girl ...

''. Although no direct connection has been made, de Superville was cited by

Albert Aurier Gabriel-Albert Aurier (5 May 1865 – 5 October 1892) was a French poet, art critic and painter, associated with the Symbolist movement. Career The son of a notary born in Châteauroux, Indre, Aurier went to Paris in 1883 to study law, but hi ...

as one of the forerunners of

Symbolist Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...

painting and de Superville's book ''Unconditional Signs in Art'' (1827–32) was widely known to that group.Gamboni (2003) A portrait of Humbert de Superville uit 1848, painted by

Jacobus Ludovicus Cornet Jacobus Ludovicus Cornet (1815, in Leiden – 1882, in Leiden), also known by his initials as J.L. Cornet, was a Dutch painter and draughtsman. He often depicted Dutch historic scenes and figures (particularly from the Dutch Golden Age), contri ...

, is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The biography ''David Pierre Giottin Humbert de Superville, 1770-1849'' by Cornelia Magdalena de Haas was published by A.W. Sijthoff in Leiden in 1941. In 1988, an exhibition of Humbert de Superville's work was held at the Musée Fabre in

Montpellier Montpellier (, , ; oc, Montpelhièr ) is a city in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region of Occitania (administrative region), Occitania, Montpellier is the prefecture of the Departments of ...

(France) and at the Institut Néerlandais in Paris.

Biography

D.P.G. Humbert de Superville was a son of Jean Humbert, a Dutch painter of Swiss and French extraction. His brother, military engineer

Jean Emile Humbert Jean Emile Humbert (23 July 1771 in The Hague – 20 February 1839 in Livorno) was a Dutch lieutenant-colonel who can be credited with rediscovering ancient Carthage. As an agent for the Dutch government he procured vital parts of the collecti ...

, is credited with rediscovering the lost city of Carthage. Humbert de Superville's assumed name of Giottino was originally a nickname he was given in Italy because his work showed similarities with the Italian master Giotto. He also took the last name de Superville after his grandmother Emilie de Superville, daughter of the eminent French Calvinist theologian Daniel de Superville, who had fled to the Dutch republic in 1685. He left the Netherlands for Rome from 1789 and lived there until 1800, when the

Papal State The Papal States ( ; it, Stato Pontificio, ), officially the State of the Church ( it, Stato della Chiesa, ; la, Status Ecclesiasticus;), were a series of territories in the Italian Peninsula under the direct sovereign rule of the pope fro ...

was restored and Humbert de Superville was forced to leave the city because he had supported the 1798 occupation of Rome by French revolutionary troops. In 1812 he settled in the Dutch town of Leiden and became a lecturer at the University of Leiden. He served as head of the Leiden drawing academy Ars Aemula Naturae (1814–1823) and as first director of the Leiden cabinet of prints, drawings and plaster statues (1825–1849). Humbert de Superville married Elisabeth Paradijs in 1816. They had two sons, one of whom died at a very young age; the other son died of typhoid at the age of 24.

Gallery

Images from the collection of the Leiden University Library: File:Humbert 1.jpeg File:Humbert 2.jpeg File:Humbert 3.jpeg File:Humbert 4.jpeg File:Humbert 5.jpeg File:Humbert de Superville - Allegory.jpg , ''Allegory'', 1801

References

External links

Portrait of Johan Melchior Kemper, painted by David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville

Portrait of David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville, painted by Jacobus Ludovicus Cornet

David Pierre Giottino Humbert de Superville at arthistoricum.net
(German)

Sources

*

(Dutch)
Musée Fabre
(French) * Thorbecke-archief, Vol. 2 (1820–1825), Historisch Genootschap (Utrecht) (Dutch) {{DEFAULTSORT:Humbert De Superville, David Pierre Giottino 1770 births 1849 deaths Dutch draughtsmen 19th-century Dutch painters Dutch male painters Painters from The Hague 19th-century Dutch male artists