Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 5, 1913.djvu/325

 SECTION XIX GODFRIED SCHALCKEN GODFRIED SCHALCKEN was born in 1643 at Made, a little village near Geertruidenberg, which was then in the province of Holland, but is now in North Brabant. His father was the Parish Minister of Made, but removed in 1654 to Dordrecht to take up the post of Rector of the High School. At Dordrecht the young Schalcken was a pupil of Samuel van Hoogstraaten about the years 1656-62. Later he went to Leyden as a pupil of G. Dou. He left a proof of their connection in the portrait of this master which he etched. From Hoogstraaten he learned the academi- cally neat and smooth manner of painting, in which he perfected himself under Dou. From Dou, too, he gained his taste for painting scenes with the artificial light of candles, charcoal fires, and the like. He acquired great facility in producing these works, and he became specially celebrated for them. After his student days he settled first in Dordrecht and later at The Hague, where his name may be traced from 1691 in the records of the artists' confraternity. He had already been once in England for a short time. In 1692 he went there for a second visit, and is not men- tioned again at The Hague till 1698. He enjoyed high favour with the great people of the day, especially with the Stadtholder King William III., whom he painted repeatedly. About 1703 he was living at the court of the Elector Palatine at Diisseldorf. He painted many pictures for the Elector ; some of them are still in the possession of the Bavarian Crown. On November 16, 1706, richly endowed with worldly goods, he died at The Hague. Like Netscher, Schalcken belongs to the commencement of the decadence in Dutch art. He added no new phases to it ; his greatest ambition was to imitate and equal his predecessors and his teachers. Above all, he aimed at imitating the scenes by artificial light of his master Dou. He attained, indeed, remarkable success as an imitator, especially in his earliest pictures, and, above all, in the small works with single figures. There is a whole series of little cabinet- pieces of this kind, and connoisseurs find much difficulty in agreeing as to whether they are the works of the master or of the pupil. Later he chose to pro- duce pictures of a somewhat larger size, which is quite exceptional for 309