HOUCKGEEST, Gerard

In his paintings Houckgeest chose a perspective construction with two vanishing points: one on the left-hand edge of the painting and one on the right in the picture. After he introduced his own approach to representing actual church interiors in his panel now in Hamburg, he explored the spaces of the Nieuwe Kerk and Oude Kerk for similar views. In all his paintings of Delft churches a colonnade is aligned diagonally with the picture plane and the architecture recedes to both sides. The effect is naturalistic and to some extent illusionistic. He employed this so-called diagonal perspective in nearly all his works.

Houckgeest made various ‘portraits’ of the interior of the New Church in Delft, all of which include depictions of the tomb of Willem I of Orange, known as William the Silent. In this painting the impressive monument stands modestly amidst a forest of pillars, the surroundings being accentuated by the bright light more than the tomb.

The painting is signed in monogram and dated lower right, on the nearest column base: GH 16(51).

This engraving, made after an unknown composition by Bartholomeus van Bassen, is the only known work on paper by Gerard Houckgeest. In all likelihood, Van Bassen’s design is based on a painting of 1636 by Pieter Saenredam, St Bavo’s in Haarlem (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

The Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) in Delft is the burial place of rulers from the House of Orange-Nassau. In the choir of the church stands the tomb of William the Silent, leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish, designed by Hendrick the Keyser. This marble mausoleum, richly decorated with bronze statues, became a popular subject for Dutch painters in the seventeenth century. The earliest painted image was made by Bartholomeus van Bassen in 1620, followed by Dirck van Delen in 1645, both of whom placed the monument inside an imaginary Gothic church.

In this panel Houckgeest reinterprets the Early Christian Basilica in the style of his own time. Certain elements of the design, such as the barrel-vaulted narthex and the giant order of columns and pilasters in the foreground, recall Catholic churches built in the Spanish Netherlands during the first third of the seventeenth century.

Similar compositions were painted from the 1620s onward by Dirck van Delen and Bartholomeus van Bassen.

The painting is signed lower right, on the column base: G. Houckgeest Fe(cit).

His first known depiction of an actual church interior is his unexpected New Church in Delft with the Tomb of William the Silent, dated 1650, now at Hamburg. By the time it was done Saenredam had been painting pictures of identifiable churches for more than two decades; however, juxtaposition of any by Saenredam with Houckgeest’s New Church shows straightaway what is novel about his painting.

In Saenredam’s church interiors the line of vision is always at an angle of about 90º to the centre of the nave or to the wall of the building he depicts. In the Hamburg picture Houckgeest, like Saenredam, has kept the field of vision relatively high, but he had the brilliant new idea of shifting his position to the side to give an angle of about 45º to the principal axis of the New Church. The new position creates intriguingly intricate diagonal views across the church. He also has considerably shortened the distance between the viewer and the closest architectural element portrayed, the massive column near the centre. Although the best-known monument in the Netherlands is subordinated to the huge pier and is partially obscured by another one, the allegorical sculptures figure of Freedom on Willem’s tomb gains emphasis by the new scheme.

The general tonality of the painting is light, yet there is a striking gain in contrast in the values of his colours, a pronounced change from Saenredam’s delicate monochromatic mode. Bright rays of sunlight, which are never found in Saemnredam’s interiors, now enter the church and relive the powerful weight of the columns. People in the church have gained emphasis too, and their clothing provides some vivid colour accents.

This panel is an autograph replica of a painting in the Mauritshuis, The Hague, with figures entirely different. These figure were probably added a few years later, perhaps by another hand.

In this scene set around the pulpit in the Oude Kerks’s nave, Houckgeest departs from his main interest in the works of 1650-51 which are concerned with the Delft churches themselves and their most important tomb monuments. Here the principal points of interest include the casual encounter of a man and woman in the foreground, the illusionistic curtain and wood frame; the picturesque sunlight streaming through crystalline air; the coral colour of the column bases, of the brick arches in the transept, and of figures in the stained-glass.

The painting is signed in monogram and dated centre bottom on the fictive frame, in foreshortening: GH 165(1).

This large canvas represents a vision of a palace architecture. It could be mistaken for an idealized souvenir of Rome if all the figures were not in Dutch costume. Most of them appear to come from the upper levels of society. The painting may be placed within a tradition of imaginary architectural painting that flourished in London and The Hague between about 1610 and 1650.

The painting is signed and dated lower right, on the column base: G. Houckgeest fe: 1638.