Samuel van Hoogstraten was one of Rembrandt’s best pupils. He learnt and worked with Rembrandt, in the attic in the pupils’ studio at Rembrandt House. He arrived there shortly after The Night Watch was completed and Rembrandt taught him about the interplay of illusion and visual deception, which he then mastered. You can see it reflected in his works of art. A nobleman reaches out to you through the painting. A man sticks his head out of a window. A letter board has the potential to become a painting. It is art that evokes amazement. Van Hoogstraten was the 3D artist of his day.
Samuel van Hoogstraten played an important role in spreading Rembrandt’s way of painting. He traveled a lot and worked in Austria, Italy and England. Everywhere he went, buyers would have been amazed by his illusionism. This gave him confidence and he developed a new type of illusionist painting: the letter board. This type of painting depicts a kind of notice board on which all sorts of objects are hung. These paintings brought Van Hoogstraten fame.
Samuel van Hoogstraten (1626-1678), Old man in a window, 1653. Oil on canvas, 111 x 86.5 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (GG 378) © KHM-Museumsverband
Van Hoogstraten’s art was not the only thing that made an impression. He also wrote an influential handbook on painting, Introduction to the high school of painting. This work is mainly about painting what he calls ‘the visible world’ – painting what you see. Generations of artists were brought up on it. Not insignificant is the fact that this book also describes Rembrandt’s views on art, making it our most important source on this great artist.
Van Hoogstraten was one of the few Rembrandt pupils who also started to make etchings. He knew that prints, being easy to transport, were a good way to spread artistic ideas and gain fame. After some early tronies in Rembrandt’s style, he mainly created portrait prints and didactic book illustrations.
The exhibition is produced in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The exhibition in Vienna opens in October 2024. For the exhibition in the Rembrandt House Museum, several exceptional works of art from foreign collections will be on display in the Netherlands for the first time again.
Please see the June 2022 feature by Sabine Pénot, Leonore van Sloten and David de Witt for more information about this exhibition project.
Related CODART publications
Sabine Pénot, Leonore van Sloten and David de Witt, “Samuel van Hoogstraten: A Collaborative Project”, CODARTfeatures, June 2022.