14 facts about Isaac van Ostade

Isaac van Ostade (bapt. June 2, 1621 – buried October 16, 1649) was a Dutch genre and landscape painter.

Van Ostade was born in Haarlem. He began his studies under his brother, Adriaen, with whom he remained until 1641, when he started his own practice. At an early mature he felt the involve of Rembrandt, and this is apparent in a Slaughtered Pig of 1639, in the gallery of Augsburg. He soon found a style more suited to his own inclinations. He produced pictures in 1641–1642 on the lines of his brother – amongst these, the Five Senses, which Adrian afterwards represented by a Man reading a Paper, a Peasant tasting Beer, a Rustic smearing his Sores like Ointment and a Countryman sniffing at a Snuff-box. A specimen of Isaac’s statute at this epoch may be seen in the Laughing Boor as soon as a Pot of Beer, in the museum of Amsterdam; the cottage interior, with two peasants and three children near a fire, in the Berlin museum; a Concert, with people listening to singers in the midst of a piper and flute player, and a Boor stealing a Kiss from a Woman, in the Lacaze hoard at the Louvre.

The interior at Berlin is lighted from a casement in the thesame Rembrandtesque style as Adrian’s interior of 1643 at the Louvre. He customary low prices for this kind of painting, in which he could by yourself remain subordinate to his brother. Gradually he solitary Adriaen’s cottage subjects for landscapes in the fashion of Esaias van de Velde and Salomon van Ruysdael. Once only, in 1645, he reverted to the earlier mode, when he produced the Slaughtered Pig, with a guy puffing out a bladder, in the museum of Lille.

Isaac’s further in his other path was greatly facilitated by his previous experience as a figure painter; and, although he now agreed his subjects either from village high streets or sedated canals, he gave buoyant life to the scenes by depicting perky groups of people next a refined and searching psychotherapy of picturesque contrasts. He did not stir long sufficient to bring his art to the highest perfection. He died upon 16 October 1649 in Haarlem, having painted about 400 pictures (see H. de Groot, 1910).

The first manifestation of Isaac’s surrender of Adriaen’s style is apparent in 1644 later than the skating and sledging scenes were executed which we look in the Lacaze hoard and the galleries of the Hermitage, Antwerp and Lille. Three of these examples bear the artists name, spelled Isack van Ostade, and the dates of 1644 and 1645. The roadside inns, with halts of travellers, form a compact series from 1646 to 1649. This is the last form of Isaac’s art and has very clear peculiarities. The ventilate which pervades his composition is warm and sunny, yet mellow and hazy, as if the flavor were veiled gone a vapour coloured by moor smoke. The trees are rubbings of umber, in which the prominent foliage is tipped when touches hardened in a liquid divulge by amber varnish mediums. The same principle applied to details such as glazed bricks or rents in the mud lining of cottages gives an unreal and customary stamp to them.

These quirks are overcome by his broad contrasts of lighthearted and shade and the masterly figures of horses, riders, travellers, rustics, quarrelling children, dogs, poultry and cattle. A favorite place is always total to the white horse, which seems as invariable an accompaniment as the grey in the skirmishes and fairs of Philip Wouwerman.

Isaac displays the best qualities in winter scenes. The non-attendance of foliage, the crisp expose and the calm let breathe of frosty January days, unsullied by smoke or vapour, preclude the use of the brown tinge, and leave the painter no unusual but to ground the changes behind a good variety of opal tints. Then the figures emerge following masterly effect upon the light background. Amongst the roadside inns it is worth noting those in the collections of Buckingham Palace, the National Gallery, London, the Wallace Collection and Holford collections in England, the Louvre, Berlin, Hermitage and Rotterdam museums and the Rothschild store at Vienna. The finest of the ice scenes is the well-known one at the Louvre.

For paintings and etchings see Les Fréres Ostade, by Marguerite van de Wiele (Paris, 1893). For his etchings see L’Œuvre d’Ostade, cu bank account des eaux-fortes de ce maître, etc., by Auguste d’Orange (1860); and Catalogue raisonné de toutes les estampes qui forment l’œuvre grave d’Adrian van Ostade, by L.E. Faucheux (Paris, 1862).