BERGEN, Dirk van

Dutch painter. He was a pupil of Adriaen van de Velde in Amsterdam. He painted idyllic sunny landscapes in golden tones, with cows, shepherds and shepherdesses (e.g. Landscape with Herdsmen and Cattle, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), in which he managed to imitate his master’s style deceptively well and sometimes also that of Nicolaes Berchem, whom he followed especially in his drawings (e.g. Cattle and Sheep Reposing in a Landscape, London, British Museum). Many of his paintings survive but only a few are dated, the earliest from 1676. They are mostly in a small format, well made but not very inventive. Sale catalogues indicate that he also depicted scenes from the life of Christ and painted the figures in a landscape by Meindert Hobbema, although this painting cannot be identified.