It was perhaps no coincidence that Govert Flinck first received a monographic study of his life and work well after his friend Jacob Adriaensz Backer (1926), and fellow Rembrandt pupil Philips Koninck (1935), and even after the lesser-known pupil Barent Fabritius (1959). The artist’s oeuvre presented scholars with a daunting challenge, not just in quantity of works, but also in the task of distinguishing his Rembrandtesque works from those by the master himself, which Arnold Houbraken claimed already fooled the connoisseurs of the day. In a compact volume published in 1965, with postage-stamp illustrations, Joachim von Moltke assembled all of the works attributed to Flinck – paintings and drawings – assigning them accepted or rejected status, sometimes with brief explanations. Unfortunately, many of his positive judgements have not held up well. Many corrections, and some additions, were offered by Werner Sumowski in his compendium series on the Rembrandt pupils. By then this included many paintings that had been rejected by the Rembrandt Research Project and reassigned to Flinck by Josua Bruyn and others. Sumowski did not pretend to be comprehensive, and some of his calls were in turn not persuasive. It was an urgent task then, that Tom van der Molen took on in embarking on a monographic study of Flinck’s paintings for a dissertation at Nijmegen University, published as a monograph by W Books. He has acquitted himself well: in an attractive, large, but still practical volume of 528 pages, he presents a highly convincing oeuvre of 224 paintings by Flinck, along with 97 rejected paintings.

Preceding the catalogue are chapters on the life and work of the artist, most significantly a biography based on new and thorough documentary research, greatly expanding our knowledge of Flinck’s family and its significance for his early career. Van der Molen here weighs the account of Houbraken on Flinck’s arrival in Amsterdam and in the Uylenburgh studio with Rembrandt and revises his report of early commissions from family members: this appears to have happened after, and not before as previously thought, Rembrandt’s departure from the Uylenburgh studio. We encounter the heroic struggle of his first wife, Ingitta Thovelingh, with a terminal abdominal condition, and follow him to his well-known social rise, and Houbraken’s report of casual visits with Burgomaster Andries de Graeff in his off hours. In his review of Flinck’s pupils, the author draws several lesser known names into the spotlight, including Bartholomeus Hopfer, Johannes Buns, and the still-obscure Steven Sleger. The chapter proceeds to address patronage by category: Uylenburgh and his network, Remonstrants, city government, and Frederick William, the Elector of Brandenburg in his hometown of Cleve. It is rounded off by an assessment of Flinck’s pursuit of a classicizing manner, following developments in artistic tastes among connoisseurs and patrons in Amsterdam, famously diverging from the solid, naturalistic Baroque manner he had learned from his teacher Rembrandt. It is accompanied by a separate chapter on the known documents, in transcription, which will prove a valuable resource to researchers in this and other fields. The author adds a full chapter on the various literary interactions in Flinck’s career, discussing the two famous Feasts of St. Luke (1653 and 1654) and their significance for the artist and his reputation and position in Amsterdam, and most extensively his connections to Joost van den Vondel, including Flinck’s contribution to the painted “series” of scenes from the play Joseph in Dothan (cat. 21), and Vondel’s many occasional poems accompanying his paintings

The book’s function as a resource will rest mainly on the catalogue, however, organized iconographically, with the section on history paintings moving from Biblical and religious themes (although the Christ with the Cross [cat. 44] does appear unexpectedly among depictions of Venus and Cupid), to depictions just of figures, followed by genre depictions and figures (including tronies) and finishing with portraits. Nearly all the works receive an entry, including some lengthy texts on major commissions for the Town Hall and the Kloveniersdoelen, complete with identification and discussion of the various sitters of group portraits. Notably, the author does not follow a rigorous system of A, B and C categories as used in the past, by the Rembrandt Research project, but instead deliberates evidence and certainty of authorship in the entries, occasionally and astutely allowing for doubt. At the same time, he also weighs the stylistic evidence of dating, most strikingly in the early oeuvre, having already courted controversy with his dating of Flinck’s famous painting of Jacob’s Blessing in the Rijksmuseum to around 1642, against the evidence of a former date of 1638, which now appears dubious. He also correctly places the earlier depiction of the same theme in Utrecht later, to around 1635/36, noting traces of Rembrandt’s instruction, alongside homages to his first teacher Lambert Jacobsz. Around 1639/40 Flinck returns to direct engagement with works by Rembrandt done after his departure in, for example, Manoah’s Sacrifice (cat. 9). One of the most important conclusions is that Flinck exercised a range of manners, here and throughout his career, a flexibility cultivated as the mark of an accomplished painter. The importance of systematic study and analysis of the entire oeuvre (demonstrated with great skill and application), based on a core group of certain works and tracing development and variation, is here only underlined, as key to convincing attributions of service to present and future readers.

It is no surprise to see a substantial section of rejected paintings, with so many non-Rembrandt paintings (often hastily) reassigned to this pupil. The catalogue provided only a few moments of hesitation for this reviewer, for instance with a portrait of a young woman whose convincing attribution to the Groningen portraitist Adam Camerarius was apparently overlooked, a rare lapse (cat. 171). There is also no reason given for overlooking the link of the earliest landscape (cat. 57) to Flinck’s teacher Lambert Jacobsz., proposed by this reviewer, based in part on the composition and classical ruins. Instead, Van der Molen favors a less convincing comparison to Hercules Segers (whose impact on Rembrandt dates a bit later). That enigmatic Haarlem master’s manner (likely only discovered a bit later by Rembrandt) is much more openly celebrated in the newly attributed landscape in a private collection (cat. 61), which, however, diverges strikingly from the other landscapes in the gnarly tree and foliage textures, and open dynamism, and whose attribution calls for further clarification. Segers figures prominently in the rightly rejected landscape background of the well-known Parable of the Treasure in Budapest (cat. V11), which looks closer to Jan Ruijscher. It must have been tempting to leave mysterious masterpieces such as the male and female tronies in São Paolo and Buenos Aires (cats. V41, VV47) in Flinck’s oeuvre, giving them the benefit of the doubt, but the author has commendably made the call against, leaving them adrift.

The result is a solidly and assiduously assembled oeuvre and life of one of Rembrandt’s most talented and ambitious pupils, and one of the most prominent artists of his age. Pilloried in the past, especially by Sumowski, for betraying his master Rembrandt, he turns out to have followed a similar model of flexibility and engagement with other great artists, especially Anthony van Dyck and Rubens. One of his most distinctive individual traits, the accentuated undulating edges of drapery folds, even goes beyond his models, forming a distinctive contribution, as seen in the work the author rightly marks as his halcyon moment, King Solomon Asking for Wisdom, for the Town Hall (cat. 24). It can be added that even the model of the free artist, offering his own inventions and creations to patrons and connoisseurs, emerges in the tantalizing account of an arrangement he struck with Uylenburgh, to deliver paintings made “according to his own fancy.”

David de Witt
Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam