The painting "The merry fiddler", painted by Gerard van Honthorst, has always fascinated me. It is a cheerful picture with a lot of colour in it and the fiddler seems to have slipped out from the frame to have a toast with us. I have always wanted to paint this, so I did, in the same way he did back then. I also teach these techniques! I will be giving three-day courses in portrait painting later this month and in May.
Gerard van Honthorst was a Dutch painter in the Golden Age and he was one of Caravaggio's best follower. Van Honthorst travelled to Italy and came to live at the palace of an important patron where he could study a gigantic art collection with work of Caravaggio and other artists. Van Honthorst was very famous back then, even more famous than Rembrandt van Rijn. He had very important clients like Pope Urbanus VIII, English king Charles I, prince Frederik Hendrik of the Netherlands and Christiaan IV, king of Denmark.
Klik om te vergoten