Gerbrand van den Eeckhout
1751-1801
Gerbrand van den Eeckhout was a Dutch Baroque painter of the Dutch Golden Age and a favorite student of Rembrandt. He was also known as Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout.
Eeckhout was born in Amsterdam as the son of a jeweler, a Mennonite who fled after 1585 from Antwerp to the north. His father’s second wife was the daughter of a founder of the Delft chamber of the Dutch East India Company. Eeckhout, unmarried, was also appreciated as art connoisseur, and dealing with poets and scientists. At the end of his life he was living with his sister-in-law, a widow, on Herengracht, at a very prestigious part of the canal.
He was a fellow pupil to Ferdinand Bol, Nicolaes Maes and Govert Flinck. He soon assumed Rembrandt’s manner with such success that his pictures were confused with those of his master.
Evidence of Eeckhout’s success in imitation is clear in his Presentation in the Temple, at Berlin, which was executed after Rembrandt’s print of 1630. Eeckhout does not merely copy the subjects; he also takes the shapes, the figures, the Jewish dress and the pictorial effects of his master. It is difficult to form an exact judgment of Eeckhout’s qualities at the outset of his career.
Eeckhout matriculated early in the Gild of Amsterdam. As he grew older Eeckhout succeeded best in portraits. Eeckhout occasionally varied his style so as to recall in later years the “small masters” of the Dutch school. Amongst the best of Eeckhout’s works are Christ in the Temple (1662), at Munich, and the Haman and Mordecai of 1665, at Luton House.
