Jacob Ochtervelt

JACOB OCHTERVELT (Rotterdam, Germany, 1634 - Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1682).
"Private concert", 1668.
Oil on canvas. Relined.
It has an old label from the collection of the Boijmans Museum, to which it belonged.
It appears referenced in the database of the Boijmans Museum: RKD nº 1001201926.
Measurements: 76 x 74cm; 92 x 90 cm (frame)

In this canvas Ochtervelt shows us one of his refined interior scenes, starring a lady wrapped in a loose silk dress, with an expression of rapture on her face as she listens to the character who sings only for her while a violinist and a lute player accompany them. The filtered lighting, focusing mainly on the couple, accentuates the intimacy of the environment. The characters are placed in the foreground, allowing the author to capture the sumptuousness of the fabrics and the delicacy of the objects, worked with meticulous attention to quality. The lighting lends a studied baroque theatricality to the whole.

According to the Flemish painter and writer Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719), biographer of numerous artists, Jacob Ochtervelt was trained in the workshop of Nicolaes Berchem in Haarlem. There he probably coincided with Pieter de Hooch between 1646, the year Berchem returned from Italy, and 1655, when Ochtervelt is documented back in Rotterdam. In the same year he married Dirkje Meesters. His early works show the influence of Italianate painters such as his master Berchem, Jan Baptist Weenix and Ludolf de Jongh. From the mid-1650s he began to paint genre scenes set in gardens with classical architecture; these works are characterized by the monumentality of the figures and are reminiscent of the paintings of Karel du Jardin. He would also incorporate an almost theatrical lighting, characteristic of the Caravaggist painters. Gradually, Ochtervelt will create his own style, concentrating on interior scenes of prosperous bourgeois, in which the figures, and especially the different qualities of their clothes, are treated with great meticulousness and care, showing in this point affinities with the work of Frans Miers the Elder. His great contribution to the genre were some original pieces of comfortable interiors, such as "The Grape Seller" (Hermitage, St. Petersburg) or "Street Musicians at the Door" (Saint Louis Art Museum), in which a group of street characters, generally musicians or peddlers, are glimpsed through the entrance door. These scenes, set on the doorstep, allowed Ochtervelt to explore the contrast and connections between characters from different social classes. His entry into the Rotterdam guild of St. Luke is not documented, but in 1667 he is mentioned among the candidates for the presidency of the institution ("Hoodfman") for the period from 1667 to 1669. In 1674 he moved to Amsterdam, where he worked until his death in 1682. The works of his last period reveal the general complexity of the last third of the 17th century in Holland, when classicist currents began to come into fashion as opposed to Dutch realism. Works by Ochtervelt can now be seen in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, the Hermitage in St. Pertersburg, the National Gallery in London, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Metropolitan in New York, the Louvre in Paris, the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna, the E.G. Bührle Collection in Zurich, the Statens Museum por Kunst in Copenhagen and the Museum der Bildenden Künste in Leipzig, among other public and private collections.