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Vaardt [Vandervaart], Jan van der
(b Haarlem, c. 1653; bur London, 30 March 1727). Dutch painter and engraver, active in England. He was trained by Thomas Wijck and moved to England in 1674 as a painter of still-lifes and small landscapes with figures. He painted draperies for the fashionable portrait painter Willem Wissing from about 1685 to 1687. Their names appear together on several paintings and on several engravings after portraits. The portrait of Frances Theresa Stuart, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox (1687; London, N.P.G.; see DRESS, fig. 42) is a fine example of their collaboration. Van der Vaardt may also be the ‘Landervart’ who together with Wissing and others completed many of Lely’s unfinished studio paintings after his death. According to Marshall Smith, he ‘Paints a Face and Posture very well, Landskip, Foul &c. extraordinary fine and is to be Rank’d among the great Masters of the Age’. He occasionally collaborated with the German-born painter Johann Kerseboom (see KERSEBOOM, (2)), one of their more notable pieces being Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds (1704; London, N.P.G.). He also imitated the portrait types of his talented contemporaries: Mr and Mrs Robert Bristow (1713; Squerryes Court, Kent) is a typical late work in the manner of Godfrey Kneller. Although suffering from poor eyesight, which later forced him to reduce the number of his commissions, he established a picture restoration business. He also practised as a mezzotint-engraver, working for the publishers Richard Thompson and Edward Cooper, and is said to have taught the engraver John Smith (i). His painting of Lot and his Daughters (untraced) is recorded in Queen Anne’s Kensington Palace inventory in the picture store, but it is not known if he painted any other subject pictures. He was buried at St Paul’s, Covent Garden.
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