Paulus Constantijn la Fargue: 12 cool facts

Paulus Constantijn la Fargue, also Constantine Paul Lafargue, (The Hague, 5 January 1729 – 10 June 1782) was a Dutch painter, etcher and draftsman.

La Fargue was born into an artistic family. His siblings Karel, Maria Margaretha, Jacob Elias and Isaac Lodewijk were everything painters. In 1768 he is recorded as a supporter of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.

Paul Constantine la Fargue was the most intelligent and the most productive zealot of the La Fargue intimates of artists from The Hague. Probably unquestionably self taught, he applied himself at first to the making of kamerbehangsels (painted wall hangings), some of them commissioned by The Hague art dealer Gerard Hoet. Soon however, he specialised in painting, drawing and etching townscapes and landscapes bearing in mind topographical elements. The sketches he made upon site formed the source material on which he and his younger brothers Jacob Elias and Karel based their more increase paintings and drawings, sometimes after an performing of over ten years. La Fargue’s topographical be in from the 1760s brought Rotterdam into the Describe as with ease as The Hague. During the 1770s views in and nearly Delft, Leiden, Haarlem, and Amsterdam were added. His paintings which were relatively small in format and clearly influenced by seventeenth-century painters such as Jan van der Heyden are somewhat static, though his more spontaneous drawings put it on greater originality. La Fargue’s depictions are fairly obedient in a topographical sense, lively in colour and filled subsequent to charming little figures that create variety. In accessory to townscapes, he is known to have represented actual events, portraits and genre scenes. He moreover illustrated several almanacs and books. Even while this artist could insert such people as the French and English ambassadors along with his patrons at the arrival of his career, his activity was not easy, and he, and his brothers and sister were continually frightened by financial problems. La Fargue who belongs to the outfit of enlarged topographical artists of the second half of the eighteenth century, nevertheless derives his significance chiefly from the documentary value of his work.