Karel Dujardin (September 27, 1622 – November 20, 1678) was a Dutch animal and landscape painter.
Biography
Karel Dujardin, Commedia dell'Arte Show, dated 1657 (Louvre)
Karel Dujardin was a Dutch painter and etcher, born in Amsterdam in 1622. Although active as a portrait and history painter, he is best known for his Italianate landscapes. Typical of his landscape paintings is Farm Animals in the Shade of a Tree (1656; National Gallery, London). Dujardin is known to have spent the last years of his life in Italy, though the style and subjects of his paintings and landscape etchings suggest that he had also spent time there much earlier in his career. He died in Venice in 1678.
After supposedly training with Nicolaes Berchem[1], the young Dujardin went to Italy, and became a member of the Society of Painters or Bentvueghels in Rome, among whom he was known as 'Barba di Becco' or Bokkebaart.[2] Here he encountered his first artistic successes.
According to Houbraken, while in Lyon, he contracted considerable debts, and married his (older) landlady to free himself of them. He went with her to Amsterdam, where his pictures were valued very highly. In 1675, he returned to Rome, on an invitation from his friend Joan Renst and was welcomed by his old friends and admirers. Renst and Dujardin went on a Grand Tour to other Italian cities, but when Renst went back to Amsterdam, Dujardin remained in Italy, and gave him a message for his wife that he would follow soon. He travelled on to Venice but died there unexpectedly in 1678. According to Reynst, he had said: "why should I be in a hurry to go back? I am where I want to be".
Collections
Dujardin is represented in the following collections amongst others: Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Fitzwilliam Museum at the University of Cambridge, UK; Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Louvre Museum, Paris; Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery, The Hague; Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota; National Gallery, London, UK; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK; Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; Crocker Art Museum, California; Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK; Harvard University Art Museums, Massachusetts; Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Scotland; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; Ringling Museum of Art, Florida; Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium; Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago; Szépmûvészeti Múzeum, Budapest; The Wallace Collection, London, UK; Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid.
References
1. ^ Bolton, Roy (2009) The Collectors: Old Master Paintings, "Karel Dujardin: A Horseman Holding a Roemer of Wine with an Ostler Tending the Horses", London, Sphinx Books. ISBN 978-1-907200-03-8.
2. ^ (Dutch) Karel de Jardyn biography in De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (1718) by Arnold Houbraken, courtesy of the Digital library for Dutch literature
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