HENSTENBURGH, Herman - b. 1667 Hoorn, d. 1726 Hoorn

Dutch painter. A pastry-cook by profession, Henstenburgh was also an amateur painter of gorgeous bouquets of flowers and still-lifes, in some cases also accompanied by small animals.

Henstenburgh’s teacher was Johannes Bronckhorst, a fellow native of Hoorn, who also instructed him in the secondary craft of baking, presumably to guarantee his pupil a good livelihood even if his artistic stock should fail to rise. According to the near-contemporary chronicler, Johan van Gool, Henstenburgh started out by depicting birds and landscapes, and then broadened his repertoire after about 1695 to include flower and fruit pieces. Van Gool went on to explain the extraordinary richness of Henstenburgh’s colours by claiming that the artist had invented a new type of watercolour.

Insects

Henstenburgh executed vellums of a scientific character, such as this sheet in which he closely studies the phenomenon of the metamorphosis of insects, which particularly fascinated Dutch entomologists and was a pretext for reflections on divine creation.

This sheet depicts cocoons, caterpillars, flies, and butterflies.