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 Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

painter and draughtsman of

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this r ...

s, landscapes and

trompe-l'œil ''Trompe-l'œil'' ( , ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a two-dimensional surface. ''Trompe l'oeil'', which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into ...

paintings and a

mezzotint Mezzotint is a monochrome printmaking process of the '' intaglio'' family. It was the first printing process that yielded half-tones without using line- or dot-based techniques like hatching, cross-hatching or stipple. Mezzotint achieves tonal ...

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 The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...

Life

Van der Vaart was born in Haarlem, where he trained with

Thomas Wijck Thomas Wijck (also Thomas Wijk, or Thomas Wyck; 1616–1677) was a Dutch painter of port views and genre paintings. Biography Wijck was born into an artist family and received his training from his father. He journeyed to Italy, presumably by 16 ...

. Van der Vaart is documented from 1674 onwards in London. Here he worked in the workshop of another Dutch immigrant,

Willem Wissing Willem Wissing, known in England as William Wissing (1656 – 10 September 1687), was a Dutch portrait artist who worked in England. He was born in either Amsterdam or The Hague, and studied at The Hague under Willem Doudijns (1630–97) and ...

, who was a pupil and former collaborator of the court portrait painter Sir Peter Lely. 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 with Frederick, where he even ...

. 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 (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. 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

References

External links

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