Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: Approaches to a Multifaceted Master
- Prolog: Samuel van Hoogstraten and the Golden Age of Dutch Art, Literature, and Science: The Present Book and Future Research
- Chapter 1 Van Hoogstraten's Theory of Theory of Art
- Chapter 2 Paradoxical Passages: The Work of Framing in the Art of Samuel van Hoogstraten
- Chapter 3 The Young Samuel van Hoogstraten, Corrected by Rembrandt
- Chapter 4 “Zwierich van sprong”: Samuel van Hoogstraten's Night Watch
- Chapter 5 Samuel van Hoogstraten's Personal Letter-Rack Paintings: Tributes with a Message
- Chapter 6 A Pledge of Marital Domestic Bliss: Samuel van Hoogstraten's Perspective Box in the National Gallery, London
- Chapter 7 Van Hoogstraten's Success in Britain
- Chapter 8 Samuel van Hoogstraten, the First Dutch Novelist?
- Chapter 9 Great Respect and Complete Bafflement: Arnold Houbraken's Mixed Opinion of Samuel van Hoogstraten
- Appendix: Arnold Houbraken's references to Samuel van Hoogstraten and his ‘Introduction to the Academy of Painting’
- Bibliography
- List of Illustrations
- About the authors
- Index
Chapter 4 - “Zwierich van sprong”: Samuel van Hoogstraten's Night Watch
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: Approaches to a Multifaceted Master
- Prolog: Samuel van Hoogstraten and the Golden Age of Dutch Art, Literature, and Science: The Present Book and Future Research
- Chapter 1 Van Hoogstraten's Theory of Theory of Art
- Chapter 2 Paradoxical Passages: The Work of Framing in the Art of Samuel van Hoogstraten
- Chapter 3 The Young Samuel van Hoogstraten, Corrected by Rembrandt
- Chapter 4 “Zwierich van sprong”: Samuel van Hoogstraten's Night Watch
- Chapter 5 Samuel van Hoogstraten's Personal Letter-Rack Paintings: Tributes with a Message
- Chapter 6 A Pledge of Marital Domestic Bliss: Samuel van Hoogstraten's Perspective Box in the National Gallery, London
- Chapter 7 Van Hoogstraten's Success in Britain
- Chapter 8 Samuel van Hoogstraten, the First Dutch Novelist?
- Chapter 9 Great Respect and Complete Bafflement: Arnold Houbraken's Mixed Opinion of Samuel van Hoogstraten
- Appendix: Arnold Houbraken's references to Samuel van Hoogstraten and his ‘Introduction to the Academy of Painting’
- Bibliography
- List of Illustrations
- About the authors
- Index
Summary
It is probably true to say that the lines of Hoogstraten's Inleyding which have been quoted most often in the literature on Dutch art are those which discuss Rembrandt's Night Watch [Fig. 31 and 32]. These lines appear in an absorbing passage, which treats of pictorial composition and the balance of imitation and invention within the artwork. Hoogstraten tells us that the painter should not line up figures in rows, as has happened in too many Dutch militia portraits. True masters, he tells us, manage to make their whole work into a compositional unity. He goes on:
Rembrandt achieved this very well in his piece in the Doelen at Amsterdam, but in the opinion of some too well, making more of the overall image he had designed, than of the individual portraits which he had been commissioned to paint. Nevertheless that same work, however much one may find fault with it, will in my opinion outlast those of his co-workers, being so pictorial in thought, so sinuous of step, and so forceful, that, in the opinions of some, all the other pieces there stand like playing cards next to it. Though I do wish that he had added more light.
One could probably write a short book on this passage, but this paper will focus on a single phrase, a phrase translated into English above, inadequately, as ‘sinuous of step’. The Dutch is ‘zwierich van sprong’, and it is an unusual expression; I do not know of any other Dutch author who uses this particular triplet of words. Recent attempts to translate the phrase have been far from uniform, suggesting a certain amount of disagreement and confusion. To give just two examples of English renderings: Seymour Slive suggested ‘dashing in movement’, while Gary Schwartz has proposed ‘graceful in the placing of the figures’. It seems to me that both translations, different as they are from one another, and from the one put forward above, are perfectly good. The truth is that these words cannot be put into twenty-first-century English, or French or German or even Dutch, with simple one-to-one equivalents. The phrase is an allusive one, and it can only be understood once the various connotations it probably had for its author have been patiently teased out.
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- The Universal Art of Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678)Painter, Writer, and Courtier, pp. 97 - 114Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2013