Godfried Schalcken

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Godfried Schalcken: Two men examining a painting by candlelight

Godfried Schalcken or Schalken (1643, Made - Nov 16, 1706, The Hague), was a Dutch genre and portrait painter.

He studied under Hoogstraten in Dordrecht, and later under Gerhard Douw in Leiden, whose works his earlier genre-pictures very closely resemble. He worked in Leiden until c. 1675, returning to Dordrecht until 1691, after which he settled in The Hague. He also visited England (1692-1697) and in 1703 he was employed by Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine in Düsseldorf.

Schalcken painted several portraits, of which the half-length of William III, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, is a good example. In this work he shows an effect of candlelight, which he also introduced--frequently with fine effect in many of his subject-pictures. These may be studied in the collections at Buckingham Palace, the Louvre, Vienna and Dresden. His masterpiece is a scene from Vrouwtje kom ten Hoof (Buckingham Palace); other good examples are: "Old Woman Scouring a Pan" and "Soldier Giving Money to a Woman" (London, National Gallery); "Ceres Seeking Proserpine" and "Old Man Writing" (Louvre); "Girl Blowing Out Taper" (Munich); "Girl Reading Letter" (Dresden Gallery); "The Boy Angling" (Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin); and "Toilet by Candle" (The Hague). His Scriptural subjects are of very indifferent merit.

[edit] Schalken the Painter

The atmospheric work of Schalken provided the inspiration for Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter (sic), a gothic horror story by Sheridan Le Fanu, which was adapted and broadcast by the BBC at Christmas in 1979 [1].