Dirck van Hoogstraten

The painter Dirck van Hoogstraten (1596-1640), who trained as a silversmith, has always stood in the shadow of his famous son Samuel (1627-1678), a pupil of Rembrandt and author of an important treatise on the art of painting. This monograph puts Dirck van Hoogstraten in the spotlight for the first time.

There was already some information about Dirck’s life thanks to the biography Arnold Houbraken wrote in the eighteenth century. However, it was only in the nineteenth century that one of his paintings caught the attention of art historians. The catalogue raisonné presented here consists of nine paintings, nine prints and three drawings, plus several works where the attribution to Dirck cannot be confirmed. Nothing of his work as a silversmith has survived. Dirck van Hoogstraten drew inspiration from history painters, Rembrandt in particular from 1632 onwards. Dirck was Samuel’s first teacher, and the relationship between the father and son is also discussed in detail.