Herman Saftleven the Younger (1609 - 5 January 1685 (buried)), was a Dutch painter of the Baroque period.

Biography

Born in Rotterdam, Saftleven lived most of his life (1632–1685) in Utrecht. His brothers,

Cornelis Saftleven Cornelis Saftleven (c. 1607 in Gorinchem – 1 June 1681 in Rotterdam) was a Dutch painter who worked in a great variety of genres. Known in particular for his rural genre scenes, his range of subjects was very wide and included portraits, farmho ...

(1607–1681) and Abraham Saftleven were both painters. The former was even better known as a painter, specializing in

genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...

scenes, while Herman was known for his

landscapes 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 p ...

of river scenes as well as of persons traveling through woods. His father, Herman Saftleven I was a painter in Rotterdam, who died by 1627. One of Herman II’s daughters, Sara Saftleven, born in Utrecht after 1633, also became a painter of flowers in watercolors. She married Jacob Adriaensz Broers in 1671. Herman became the dean of the

Guild of St 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 ident ...

in Utrecht. After a storm had destroyed most of the town in the 1670s, he sold the city a series drawings he had made of Utrecht churches before they were destroyed. In the 1680s, he was commissioned by the amateur botanist and horticulturalist

Agnes Block Agnes, or Agneta Block (29 October 1629, Emmerich am Rhein – 20 April 1704, Amsterdam) was a Dutch Mennonite art collector and horticulturalist. She is most remembered as the compiler of an album of flower and insect paintings. Life Agneta Bl ...

, to draw flowers and plants at her country estate near Utrecht. He died in

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

References

Web gallery of Art. Grove encyclopedia abstract.
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