Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/645

Rh HEDGE-SPARROW. See.  HEEM, (or ), was born according to Houbraken and Sandrart in, according to Descamps in, at Utrecht, and died at Antwerp in 1683 or 1684. Thoré has said of Heda, but it is only true of De Heem, that “he glorified insects, butterflies, and all the minute beings that swarm in vegetation, and made the moth drink in cups of chased gold.” He was, if not the first, certainly the greatest painter of still life in Holland ; no artist of his class combined more successfully perfect reality of form and colour with brilliancy and harmony of tints. No object of stone or silver, no flower humble or gorgeous, no fruit of Europe or the tropics, no twig or leaf, with which he was not familiar. Sometimes he merely represented a festoon or a nosegay. More frequently he worked with a purpose to point a moral or illustrate a motto. Here the snake lies coiled under the grass, there a skull rests on blooming plants. Gold and silver tankards or cups suggest the vanity of earthly possessions ; salvation is allegorized in a chalice amidst blossoms, death as a crucifix inside a wreath. Sometimes De Heem painted alone, sometimes in company with men of his school, Madonnas or portraits surrounded by festoons of fruit or flowers. At one time he signed with initials, at others with Johannes, at others again with the name of his father joined to his own. At rare intervals he condescended to a date, and when he did the work was certainly of the best. De Heem entered the guild of Antwerp in 1635-6, and became a burgher of that city in 1637. He steadily maintained his residence till 1667, when he moved to Utrecht, where traces of his presence are preserved in records of 1668, 1669, and 1670. It is not known when he finally returned to Antwerp, but his death is recorded in the guild books of that place. A very early picture, dated 1628, in the gallery of Gotha, bearing the signature of Johannes in full, shows that De Heem at that time was familiar with the techuical habits of execution peculiar to the youth of Albert Cuyp. In later years he completely shook off dependence, and appears in all the vigour of his own originality.

1em

1em  HEEMSKERK, (–1656), Dutch poet, was born at Amsterdam in. He was educated as a child at Bayonne, and entered the university of Leyden in 1617. In 1621 he went abroad on the grand tour, leaving behind him his first volume of poems, Alinnekunst (The Art of Love), which appeared in 1622. He was absent from Holland four years. He was made master of arts at Bourges in 1623, and in 1624 visited Hugo Grotius in Paris. On his return in 1625 he published Afinnepligt (The Duty of Love), and began to practise as an advocate in the Hague. In 1628 he was sent to England in his legal capacity by the Dutch East India Company, to settle the dispute respecting Amboyna. In the same year he published the poem entitled Afinnekunde, or the Science of Love. He proceeded to Amsterdam in 1640, where he married Alida, sister of the eminent statesman Van Beuningen. In 1642 he published Zhe Cid, a tragi- comedy, and in 1647 his most famous work, the pastoral romance of Batavische Arcadia, which he had written ten years before. During the last twelve years of his life Heemskerk sat in the upper chamber of the states-general. His last poetical work was The Inconstant Hylas. He died at Amsterdam on the 27th of February 1656.

1em  HEEMSKERK, (–), sometimes called Van Veen, was born at Heemskerk in Holland in, and apprenticed by his father, a small farmer, to Cornelisz Willemsz, a painter at Haarlem. Recalled after a time to the paternal homestead and put to the plough or the milking of cows, young Heemskerk took the first opportunity that offered to run away, and demonstrated his wish to leave home for ever by walking in a single day the 50 miles which separate his native hamlet from the town of Delft. There he studied under a local master whom he soon deserted for John Schoreel of Haarlem. At Haarlem he formed what is known as his first manner, which is but a quaint and gauche imitation of the florid style brought from Italy by Mabuse and others. He then started on a wandering tour, during which he visited the whole of northern and central Italy, stopping at Rome, where he had letters for a cardinal. It is evidence of the facility with which he acquired the rapid execution of a scene-painter that he was selected to co-operate with Antonio da San Gallo, Battista Franco, and Francesco Salviati to decorate the triumphal arches erected at Rome in April in honour of Charles V. Vasari, who saw the battle-pieces which Heemskerk then produced, says they were well composed and boldly executed. On his return to the Netherlands he settled at Haarlem, where he soon became president of his guild, married twice, and secured a large and lucrative practice. In he left Haarlem for Amsterdam, to avoid the siege which the Spaniards laid to the place, and there he made a will which has been preserved, and shows that he had lived long enough and prosperously enough to make a fortune. At his death, which took place on the 1st of October, he left money and land in trust to the orphanage of Haarlem, with interest to be paid yearly to any couple which should be willing to perform the marriage ceremony on the slab of