Jan van Noordt: life and works

Jan van Noordt (1623/24, Schagen – after 1676, Amsterdam?), was a Dutch Golden Age painter.

Jan (Joan, Johannes) van Noordt was one of four sons of the schoolteacher and carilloneur Sibrand van Noordt. The associates hailed from the North Holland town of Schagen, where Jan was born in 1623 or 1624, and moved to Amsterdam in the late 1630s, taking a house on the Rusland. Jan’s brothers Jacobus and Anthonie became the most prominent organists in the city, gaining posts in various churches, including the Oude Kerk and the Nieuwezijds Kapel. Jan appears already to have started training in Amsterdam competently before 1640, under Jacob Adriaensz. Backer, as he contributed to paintings from that year such as Jesus and the Samaritan Woman in Middelburg, and David and Bathsheba in a private stock in Tokyo. Jan studied alongside Abraham van den Tempel and would remain friends with him and his brother Jacob, a textile merchant.

As an independent player Van Noordt turned his attention to genre themes, especially the pastoral scenes that had become in style in Dutch art. In the late 1650s he started to fascination portrait patronage, and this evidently allowed him to compensation to archives painting. In the course of the 1660s his style shifted from the energetic elegance studied from Backer to a ripe and robust style drawing mainly upon the Flemish painter Jacob Jordaens, who had recently carried out major commissions in Amsterdam. He drew a commission for portraits from Jan Jacobsz. Hinlopen and Leonora Huydecoper. During these years he taught Johannes Voorhout, among extra artists. His production declined after 1672, owing to the general economic downturn in the wake of the Triple Invasion of 1672. He remained a bachelor, and was sharing dwelling with his brother Anthonie in 1670. In 1674 he gave his habitat as the Bloemgracht in the Jordaan district of Amsterdam in 1674, and gave stirring a small studio nearby on the Egelantiersgracht in 1675. A signed and dated Rest upon the Flight into Egypt of 1676 is the last recorded hint of him.

Van Noordt likely contributed to production in Backer’s flourishing workshop in the late 1630s, and the antediluvian signs of his hand is in background figures in Backer’s Christ and the Samaritan Woman of 1640s in Middelburg. Not much progressive he produced a large Triumph of David, in which Backer’s impinge on is strongly evident.