Harmen Steenwijck or Harmen Steenwyck ( 1612 – after 1656) was a

Dutch Golden Age The Dutch Golden Age ( nl, Gouden Eeuw ) was a period in the history of the Netherlands, roughly spanning the era from 1588 (the birth of the Dutch Republic) to 1672 (the Rampjaar, "Disaster Year"), in which Dutch trade, science, and Dutch art, ...

painter who specialised in

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

painting, especially in the style of Dutch

vanitas A ''vanitas'' (Latin for 'vanity') is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death. Best-known are ''van ...

Early life

Harmen Steenwijck - Vanitas Still-Life - WGA21768

Steenwyck was born in

Delft Delft () is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam, to the southeast, ...

, 1612. He was the brother of

Pieter Steenwijck Pieter Steenwijck (c. 1615, Delft – 1666, Delft), was a Dutch Golden Age painter. Early life Steenwyck was born in Delft, 1615. He was the brother of Harmen Steenwijck, also a still-life painter. His father was Evert Hamenz who was an eye ...

, also a still-life painter. His father was Evert Hamenz who was an eyeglass maker. In 1628 he moved to Leiden to live and study with his uncle. He and his brother were taught to paint by their uncle

David Bailly David Bailly (1584–1657) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. Biography Bailly was born at Leyden in the Dutch Republic, the son of a Flemish immigrant, calligrapher and fencing master, Peter Bailly. As a draftsman, David was pupil of his fathe ...

in Leiden. Baily is credited with inventing the

genre and he influenced Steenwyck to paint in the vanitas genre. The exact dates of his paintings are not known because he did not date his paintings.

Career

Harmen became active as a painter in Leiden between 1628 and 1633. Not much is known about his life but it was in Leiden that he began to paint in the vanitas genre. His formula for his paintings was to stage objects in a diagonal or triangle arrangement on a table. Steenwijck is best known for his painting which was done in the Dutch

genre: '' Still Life: An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life''. He painted the image in Leiden 1640. It is in the collection of the

National Gallery, London The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London, England. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The current Director o ...

References

External links

Works and literature
at PubHist
''An Allegory of the Vanities of Human Life''
at the National Gallery, London
Harmen Steenwijck at the Netherlands Institute for Art History''Vermeer and The Delft School''
a full text exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Harmen Steenwijck {{DEFAULTSORT:Steenwijck, Harmen 1610s births 1650s deaths Artists from Delft Painters from Delft Dutch Golden Age painters Dutch male painters Dutch still life painters Year of birth uncertain Year of death uncertain