Times of Day/ Vesper

Jan de Visscher/ Johannes Visscher (c. 1636-before 1712) was a Dutch Golden Age printmaker who became a painter in later life. According to Arnold Houbraken, the great early biographer of Dutch artists, he was an able etcher who made famous prints in his lifetime after the works of Nicolaes Pietersz Berchem (as here), Jan van Goyen, Adriaen van Ostade and Philips Wouwerman. He became an able pupil of the landscape painter Michiel Carrée at the advanced age of 56. Houbraken spoke to Carrée personally about his art, who claimed that Visscher became as good as he was at Italianate landscapes although no paintings by Visscher's hand are known today. Jan de Visscher had two brothers, Cornelis Visscher and Lambert de Visscher. Although he spent his earlier life in Haarlem, he had moved to Amsterdam in 1658. His death was not recorded, and since he is referred to in the past tense when Houbraken was writing, he is assumed to have died before 1712.

This engraving/etching is from the Times of Day, after Nicolaes Berchem. Te Papa owns a complete set of four. In this scene, the third in the series, Vesper or Evening, the romantic pastoral mood continues. At the opening of a cave a shepherd, holding a staff, sits side-saddle on his donkey and converses in a relaxed way with a pretty shepherdess with a sheep under her arm while the flock of cattle, goats, sheep and a donkey  drink from a stream.

See: Wikipedia, 'Jan de Visscher', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_de_Visscher

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    April 2019