Book Description

The Paintings of Karel du Jardin (1626 Amsterdam-Venice 1678) is the first monograph devoted to this talented and versatile artist. It comprises six chapters outlining Du Jardin's life, his reception, his patrons, portraits, history paintings and landscapes, followed by a conclusion, a list of documents, and a catalogue raisonné of his approximately 158 autographs paintings, as well as doubtful and rejected works. Celebrated in his own lifetime by poets and playwrights, and known primarily for his luminous Italianate landscape paintings, he also produced a modest number of elegant and aristocratising portraits of Amsterdam's patrician and merchant elites, along with stunning and recondite history paintings. Never fully studied before, these works have been carefully researched, with much new or additional provenance, and are discussed in terms of their content and meaning; at times unusual and innovative. They are set within the context of artistic developments both in the Netherlands and abroad, as well as Du Jardin's own life, now fully reconstructed with a wealth of new archival material, and that of his circle of well-to-do, educated patrons and buyers, who turned out to share certain notions of civility and honnêteté.