|
Grebber, Pieter (Fransz.) de
(b Haarlem, c. 1600; d Haarlem, 1652–4). Dutch painter. Together with Salomon de Bray, he was a pioneer among the Haarlem Classicists—a group of artists who have often been unjustly overshadowed by other history painters, notably Rembrandt and his school, who are regarded as more indigenously Dutch. De Grebber was the son of the Haarlem painter and art dealer Frans Pietersz. de Grebber (1573–1643), who, among his other activities, served as Rubens’s agent with the English Ambassador to The Hague, Sir Dudley Carleton. Pieter studied with his father, who painted militia company portraits and history subjects. The young de Grebber travelled to Antwerp with his father in 1618; there he may have met Rubens, whose art was a factor in the formation of his early style. Pieter also studied with the local Haarlem artist Hendrick Goltzius, whose history paintings probably had a formative effect on several of the Haarlem Classicists. De Grebber’s earliest dated work is a Portrait of a Woman (1621; Delft, Klaeuwshofje). A Caritas (Houston, TX, Mus. F.A.) and a Mother and Child (Haarlem, Frans Halsmus.) both date from 1622, and the following year he executed a life-sized Musical Company (Washington, DC, priv. col.), a genre scene in the tradition of the Utrecht Caravaggisti. However, most of his paintings are religious scenes, and by 1625 these were executed in his own version of international Baroque Classicism (e.g. Adoration of the Magi, 1632; Turin, Gal. Sabauda). He also produced numerous portraits of Roman Catholic priests, nuns or beguins. He joined the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1632, and two years later he bought a house in the Beguinhof; throughout his life he remained closely allied to the Catholic community in the Netherlands, producing altarpieces for local recusant churches as well as for Catholic churches in Flanders and elsewhere (e.g. the Annunciation, 1633; Hannover, Amir Palczad priv. col., see 1980–81 exh. cat., p. 195). Despite his faith, he was elected dean of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1642, was praised by the authors Samuel Ampzing (1628), Philips Angel (1642) and Petrus Schrevelius (1648), and received the official patronage of the Haarlem city fathers, Stadholder Frederick Henry (for whom he produced paintings for Honselaarsdijk Palace (destr.) in 1638) and the latter’s widow, Amalia von Solms (who commissioned decorations for the Oranjezaal in the Huis ten Bosch, The Hague, 1648–50). De Grebber published his theory of art in 11 rules, printed on a single broadsheet in 1649. He was also active as an amateur poet and composer.
|
