Allaert van Everdingen

Month of August (Virgo): The Harvest, brush and grey and brown wash.

Allaert van Everdingen (; bapt. 18 June 16218 November 1675 (buried)), was a Dutch Golden Age painter and printmaker in etching and mezzotint.

Biography Van Everdingen was born at Alkmaar, the son of a government clerk. He and his older brothers, the painters Jan and Caesar van Everdingen, according to Arnold Houbraken, were taught by Roelandt Savery at Utrecht. Allaert moved in 1645 to Haarlem, where he studied under Pieter de Molijn. In February of that year he married Janneke Cornelisdr. Their first child, Cornelis, was born a year later. Allart finally settled about 1657 in Amsterdam, where he died in 1675.

Style It would be difficult to find a greater contrast than that presented by the works of Savery and Everdingen. Savery inherited the brilliant style of the Brueghels, which he carried into the 17th century; whilst Everdingen realized the large and effective system of coloured and powerfully shaded landscape which characterises the precursors of Rembrandt. A fascination with the exotic is probably what inspired Allaert to travel himself, though it is quite within the range of probability that he acquired his approach from his drawing master, Pieter de Molijn. Alkmaar, itself a busy trading place near Texel island, had little of the picturesque for an artist except polders and dunes or waves and sky. Accordingly, we find Allaert at first a painter of coast scenery. But on one of his expeditions he is said to have been cast ashore in Norway, and during the repairs of his ship he visited the inland valleys, and thus gave a new course to his art. Exhibition catalogue edited by Christi M. Klinkert and Yvonne Bleyerveld. Translation by Lynn Richards. Allart van Everdingen, 1621–1675: Master of the Rugged Landscape. Rotterdam: nai010, 2021.