Jacob Ochtervelt

Dutch, 1634 - 1682

Jacob Ochtervelt, one of the leading specialists of aristocratic genre paintings in the 17th century, was born in Rotterdam in 1634. His father, Lucas Hendricksz Ochtervelt, was a bridge worker who earned a modest annual salary and was not, therefore, able to raise his family in the luxurious patrician manner that would become the principal subject of Jacob’s work.[1] The only known reference to Ochtervelt’s artistic education comes from the scholar Arnold Houbraken, who noted that Ochtervelt and Pieter de Hooch (1629–1684), also from Rotterdam, had been pupils of the Haarlem master Nicolaes Pietersz Berchem (1620–1683) at the same time.[2] If Ochtervelt had been a student of Berchem, it would probably have been in the late 1640s or early 1650s and he would presumably have been trained in the Dutch Italianate landscape tradition. Indeed, his earliest works are of landscapes with figures. However, Ochtervelt soon abandoned that style and subject matter and turned almost exclusively to aristocratic genre scenes and portraiture, with which he enjoyed great success.

Documents concerning his life focus entirely on his activities as a family man and member of the community. In 1655, Ochtervelt married Dirkje Meesters in the Reformed Church of Rotterdam. The couple never had children of their own, but from 1666 they served as guardians to the orphaned children of Ochtervelt’s brother Jan.[3] From 1661 to 1672, Octhervelt appears 14 times in the Rotterdam archives as a witness to christenings, will signings, and property settlements. In 1667, Octhervelt was nominated to be master of the Guild of Saint Luke, but lost the election to Cornelis Saftleven (1607–1681). In 1674, Ochtervelt was drawn, like so many other artists, to Amsterdam because of the city’s bustling art market. He remained there until his death in 1682.

Nearly all of Octhervelt’s surviving oeuvre of 130 paintings depict the life and leisure of the upper class: men and women reading and writing letters, eating and drinking, making music, and playing games. The subject matter, which owes much to the refined images of the wealthy bourgeoisie by Gerard ter Borch the Younger (1617–1681), allowed Ochtervelt to demonstrate his fine technique and sensitive handling of light and shadow. In particular, he relished depicting different colors and textures of materials, thereby also betraying the influence of Frans van Mieris (1635–1681), whose elegant works are marked by smooth execution, invisible brushwork, and extraordinary attention to detail.

Notes

[1] Susan Kuretsky, The Paintings of Jacob Ochtervelt (1634–1682) (Oxford, 1979), 4.

[2] Arnold Houbraken, De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen, 3 vols. in 1 (The Hague, 1753; reprinted, Amsterdam, 1976), 2:34–35.

[3] Susan Kuretsky, The Paintings of Jacob Ochtervelt (1634–1682) (Oxford, 1979), 4.

Explore Selected Works

A child and woman stand at the open door of an entryway with black and white marble floors, as the child drops a coin into the hat of a disheveled boy accompanied by a nursing mother across the threshold in this vertical painting. Beyond the entryway, a man and woman look on from a room with a landscape painting hanging over a tall mantle. All the people have pale skin. The child standing with the woman inside, near the door, looks at us with gray eyes. Blond ringlets frame a round face with full cheeks, a snub nose, and parted coral-red lips. The ringlets are tied with butter-yellow ribbons and the rest of the head is covered with a white cap. The child’s garment has a wide, flaring, flat collar, a tight-fitting bodice, and a flaring, floor-length skirt. Pale plum-purple, puffy sleeves are tied with pale yellow and azure-blue ribbons, and a cape of the same fabric lined with pale grass-green falls from the shoulders. A medallion hangs from a thick gold chain looped over the child’s right shoulder, to our left, across to the opposite hip. The child touches the hand of the woman standing behind with one hand, to our right, and drops a silver coin into the proffered hat with the other. The woman’s body faces us but she turns her oval-shaped face to look down at the boy holding out his hat. She wears a scarlet-red, long-sleeved bodice with a wide, white collar over her chest. A taupe-brown apron covers her dark skirt and her bonnet is long on the sides, draping to brush her shoulders. She rests her right hand, to our left, on her stomach and touches the fingertips of the child in front of her with the other. Near the lower right corner of the painting, a small white dog with ginger-brown spots stands on the black and white marble floor, looking up toward the exchange. Light pours into the entryway through the open door and a transom window above it. The walls are light gray and the doorways are surrounded with darker gray molding. A painting of a landscape hangs above the doorway leading to the room beyond. The man and woman there look at us from in front of a mantle that is taller than the woman who stands next to the man, who is seated. The woman’s hair is pulled back under a cap, and she wears a silver-gray dress lined with a wide band of white fur. She holds one hand to her waist and gestures toward the foyer with the other. The man wears a black suit with a wide, flat collar. The floor in this room is a checkerboard pattern of white and brick-red squares, and sky-blue panels with gilded leafy designs cover part of the walls. A carved stone cherub like a small, chubby child, stands on the mantle to our left, next to the landscape painting there. Back in the entryway, across the threshold, the boy steps with one foot onto the floor of the foyer as he holds out his frayed, brimmed hat. He has short-cropped blond hair and wears a mustard-yellow shirt with tattered brown pants. The nursing woman stands next to the door, out of sight of the people inside, holding a baby to one round breast. The boy and woman’s faces, necks, and hands are noticeably tanned, almost orange. Two small children huddle, almost out of sight, in the narrow space between the boy and the left edge of the painting. They look down onto a few light tan disks, perhaps coins, on the step in front of them. In the distance beyond the family are a few trees and buildings beneath a vibrant blue sky with puffy white clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “J. Ochtervelt f. 1663.”
Jacob Ochtervelt, A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer, 1663, oil on canvas, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, 2015.68.1

A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer

Jacob Ochtervelt · 1663 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2015.68.1

Bibliography

1924

  • Valentiner, Wilhelm R. "Jacob Ochtervelt." Art in America 12 (1924): 264-284.

1937

  • Plietzch, Eduard. "Jacob Ochtervelt." Pantheon 20 (1937): 364-372.

1973

  • Kuretsky, Susan. "The Ochtervelt Documents." Oud Holland 87 (1973): 124-141.

1979

  • Kuretsky, Susan. The Paintings of Jacob Ochtervelt (1634-1682). Oxford, 1979.