Jan van der Vaart - Wooded Landscape with Trees and Figures

Jan van der Vaart or Jan van der Vaardt (name variations: John Van der Vaart, John Vander Vaart, Jan van der Waart) (c.1650 –1727) was a Dutch painter and draughtsman of portraits,

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 ...

s and trompe-l'œil paintings and a mezzotint artist who was active in England for most of his career. He was also an art restorer and art collector.Biographical details
in the Netherlands Institute for Art History

Life

Van der Vaart was born 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 ...

, where he trained with Thomas Wijck. Van der Vaart is documented from 1674 onwards in London. Here he worked in the workshop of another Dutch immigrant, Willem Wissing, who was a pupil and former collaborator of the court portrait painter Sir

Peter Lely Sir Peter Lely (14 September 1618 – 7 December 1680) was a painter of Dutch origin whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court. Life Lely was born Pieter van der Faes to Dutch ...

. Van der Vaart painted draperies and landscapes in the portraits of Wissing. After Wissing's death in 1687, van der Vaart continued his workshop. He collaborated on occasion with the German-born painter

Johann Kerseboom Johann Kerseboom (died October 26, 1708) was a German painter. His date of birth is not known. Kerseboom was born in Germany, and was the nephew of the painter Frederick Kerseboom. In the 1680s he traveled to England England is a country ...

. In 1713 van der Vaart sold off his collection and built a house in Covent Garden. He stopped painting and confined himself to the restoration of paintings because of his deteriorating eyesight. He died in London, a bachelor, and his nephew Arnold continued his restoration business.Horace Walpole, 'John Vander Vaart'
in: Anecdotes of painting in England, 1717-1797, p. 306 Portrait of a Violin by Jan van der Vaart

Portrait of a Violin by Jan van der Vaart

He was probably the teacher of the famous English mezzotint engraver

John Smith John Smith is a common personal name. It is also commonly used as a placeholder name and pseudonym, and is sometimes used in the United States and the United Kingdom as a term for an average person. It may refer to: People :''In chronological ...

(1652–1742).Richard Jeffree. "Smith, John (i)."
Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 14 Feb. 2014.

Work

He was a versatile painter and painted in a wide range of genres including flower still lifes, religious paintings, history paintings, landscapes, portraits and trompe-l'oeil still lives. According to Walpole he painted a trompe l'oeil of a violin on a door at

Chatsworth House Chatsworth House is a stately home in the Derbyshire Dales, north-east of Bakewell and west of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Chesterfield, England. The seat of the Duke of Devonshire, it has belonged to the House of Cavendish, Cavendish family sin ...

. He is primarily known for his portraits and landscapes. A number of van der Vaard's portraits were engraved in mezzotint by Bernard Lens for the print publisher Edward Cooper. Van der Vaart was himself one of the earliest practitioners of mezzotint in England and produced many prints after portraits made by portrait artists like Sir Peter Lely, Willem Wissing etc.Jan van der Vaart (1647-1721)
at the

National Portrait Gallery, London The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Vaart, Jan van der 1650s births 1727 deaths Dutch painters Dutch male painters Trompe-l'œil artists Artists from Haarlem