Hoogstraten,_Samuel_Dirksz_Van

Hoogstraten, Samuel Dirksz Van, Dutch painter, was born, it is said, in 1627 at the Hague, and died at Dort on the 19th of October 1678. This artist, who was first a pupil of his father, lived at the Hague and at Dort till about 1640, when on the death of Dirk Hoogstraten he changed his residence to Amsterdam and entered the school of Rembrandt. A short time afterwards he started as a master and painter of portraits, set out on a round of travels which took him (1651) to Vienna, Rome and London, and finally retired to Dort, where he married in 1656, and held an appointment as “provost of the mint.” Hoogstraten’s works are scarce; but a sufficient number of them has been preserved to show that he strove to imitate different styles at different times. In a portrait dated 1645 in the Lichtenstein collection at Vienna he imitates Rembrandt; and he continues in this vein as late as 1653, when he produced that wonderful figure of a Jew looking out of a casement, which is one of the most characteristic examples of his manner in the Belvedere at Vienna. A view of the Vienna Hofburg, dated 1652, in the same gallery displays his skill as a painter of architecture, whilst in a piece at the Hague representing a Lady Reading a Letter as she crosses a Courtyard, or a Lady Consulting a Doctor, in the Van der Hoop Museum at Amsterdam, he imitates de Hooch. One of his latest works is a portrait of Mathys van den Brouck, dated 1670, in the gallery of Amsterdam. The scarcity of Hoogstraten’s pictures is probably due to his versatility. Besides directing a mint, he devoted some time to literary labours, wrote a book on the theory of painting (1678) and composed sonnets and a tragedy. We are indebted to him for some of the familiar sayings of Rembrandt. He was an etcher too, and some of his plates are still preserved. His portrait, engraved by himself at the age of fifty, still exists.

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