Hendrick Goudt: life and works

Hendrick Goudt (c. 1583 – 17 December 1648) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draftsman of landscapes and religious subjects who was strongly influenced by Adam Elsheimer.

Goudt was born in The Hague, the son of Arend Goudt and Anneken Cool. Goudt’s grandfather Hendrik came from a relations of high officials. He was the nephew and beneficiary of the Willem Goudt, steward of the States of Holland, whose loads is upon display at Noordeinde Palace, which he constructed in 1533. Goudt’s mommy was the daughter of an inn-keeper in Dortrecht who by anything accounts suffered from mental complaint characterised at the grow old as hysteria. Arend Goudt upon married Anneken upon 10 January 1604 in order to legitimise his son, and continued to liven up apart from her. Hendrick left for Rome after this.

Hendrick worked behind Elsheimer in Rome until the latter’s death in 1610. By 1611, Hendrick had returned to Utrecht, where he became a member of the newly founded Utrecht Guild of Saint Luke in that year. Upon his reward in the Netherlands, he made a series of five prints of Elsheimer’s work (popularizing, for example, Flight into Egypt), and moreover painted several copies of Elsheimer’s paintings, a number of which he had brought to Utrecht.

His father had been ennobled by Henri IV in 1596 (Hendrick himself was titled Ridder, Heere van Noortnieuwlant, van de Keen ende ambachtsheer van de vijff Gorssen). On 12 December 1612, Arend purchased a large property in the Janskerkhof in Utrecht. These are today Janskerkhof 18 and 19.

Houbraken wrote that he was definite an aphrodisiac in 1624 by a young lady who wished to marry him, and this addled his brain to the tapering off that until his death he could lonesome discuss art topics coherently. However, Arend Goudt’s will of 1625 states that Hendrick had been crazy for greater than four years, and that a board of trustees had been appointed to see after his affairs.